 Hello and welcome to the Planning Commission regular meeting of May 19th, 2022. I am now officially calling this meeting to order. Could we please have a roll call vote? Here. Here. I think Chair Dawson is absent with notification. Okay, great. Thank you, Tess. And so we're gonna move on. Are there any statements of disqualification for tonight's meeting? Okay, so seeing none, are there any oral communications? Is there anyone in the audience who would like to, this is a time when anyone can speak on a matter, not on the agenda, but appropriately before the Planning Commission for up to three minutes. Are there? Great. Okay, there's a member of the public. I see Brian Shields with hands up. Should we just begin that now? Okay, welcome, Brian. And the floor is yours for three minutes. Brian Shields, I'm an organizer for Carpenters Local 505 here in Aptos. I'm addressing you tonight, bring to the forefront of your minds the need for labor standards. We'll set the floor for how construction workers should be treated in our city. As this time. I'm afraid we lost you there. A second Brian, if you wanna try your connection, we can extend your time. Oh dear. Maybe we can try starting that one again. That's unfortunate. Okay. Okay, so we can just cut back to oral communications later. Okay, great. So hold tight, work on your connection there. And we will cut back to you once you're able to rejoin us. Thank you for your effort. And we look forward to hearing from you. So, are there any other members of the public who would like to speak before us? On matters that are not on the agenda, but are of concern to the commission. Okay, so seeing none, we are going to move on to approval of the minutes from the last meeting. I believe, oh, let's see. Is there a hand raised? I see. Okay, we're gonna move on to approval of the minutes from the last meeting. Does anyone have any questions or concerns about the minutes from the last meeting? Yes, I do. Okay. I'm commissioning. Just a minor typographical error in the minutes on the downtown plan expansion project in the motion where in the motion was made twice, but at both times it said motion made by commission shift from second by chairperson Dawson to the planning commission. It should be that the planning commission recommend. Otherwise it doesn't really make any sense to the planning commission recommend to the city council. So I would recommend that the minutes be changed that the wording in the minutes be changed both the first and the second time the motion is made from two to that. That's the only change I would suggest. Does anyone else have any questions or concerns about the minutes? Okay. Would anyone like to make a motion to approve the minutes as amended? I'll move it to the minutes be approved as amended. Do we have a second? I'll second that motion. Okay. Thank you. So can we get a roll call vote please? Okay. Minutes are approved. That was our first action and we are now, let me just make sure that the member of the public is not, and if we can cut back to you Mr. Shields, if you would like to, if you would like to make oral communications are you able to join us right now? Okay. So we'll hold off on that for later. Okay. Great. That's a great idea. Thanks. Thanks Tess. Hello. Good evening commissioners. It's Brian Shields again from Carpenter's Local 505. Sorry about the connection issue. I don't mean to waste your guys' time. But- Don't worry. So my name's Brian Shields. I'm an organizer for Carpenter's Local 505 and Aptos. I'm addressing you tonight to bring to the forefront of your minds the need for labor standards, which will set the floor for how construction workers should be treated in our city. As this city continues to grow with new developments that are coming through the pipeline, we need to remember the people who actually do the building. These people were deemed essential workers during the peak of COVID and work day in day out to provide roofs where we sleep and buildings where we work. Any plan for development that lacks provision for labor denies a whole group of our community. The truth is that when workers are paid under the table, 1099, and paid substandard wages, the cost of the community is dire. Workers paid substandard wages end up relying on subsidized healthcare, subsidized housing, and many times subsidized food. We have an opportunity here in Santa Cruz to support hardworking construction workers by adding language into all development that support apprenticeship, healthcare, and prevailing wage. Ask yourself, wouldn't it be better if we set a floor that empowers our workforce, raises the standards, and provides jobs to competent carpenters? Thank you for your time. Thank you very much for that contribution. Would anyone like to respond on the commission to the comments? We don't normally respond to our publications and we don't take actions on them. Right, right, we don't take actions but we don't have any response. Okay, so we just have it be a contribution to the meeting. Okay, well, thank you very much, Mr. Shields, for that very important contribution. And so moving on, the next item on our agenda is, hold on one second, I'm on a small screen here and I'm going back to the agenda. So the next item is, we're moving on to general business. So we are now, the next item is the 2023 to 2027, Capital Improvement Program Consistency with General Plan. Could we have a staff report, please, on this item? Good evening, commission. My name is Catherine Donovan. I'm a senior planner with our Advanced Planning Division and it is my pleasure to join you tonight and give this presentation. Let me just share my screen. Okay, are you seeing my screen? Yes, it looks great. Okay, I'm not seeing what you're seeing. So, just seeing what it looks like an Alpine village. Yeah, well, I thought that was your screen. I'm sorry, that's my screen saver. No, that's my background. That's not what I'm trying to share. Oh, okay. I'm so sorry. Let's try this again. I just found this background and I love it, but it wasn't what I wanted to show you. Okay, I was like, where is that? Looks like Santa Cruz. Okay, it's doing it again. I'm seeing your PowerPoint, but not as a slideshow. Let's try this. Okay, how's that? Is this seeing it as a slideshow? Yeah, it's not in presentation mode, it looks like. But, so you tried, yeah, clicking on the. You can still see the main slide though, just get to see what's coming up next. Okay, that's good. Perfect. You got it? Oh, good. Okay. So, the 2023, 2027. DIP consistency with a general plan 2030. This is a requirement of state law, government code section 65401. And it mandates that prior to approval of the annual capital improvement program budget, the planning agency for the jurisdiction review the budget for conformity with the general plan. And a project is considered to be consistent with the general plan. If it will further the objectives and policies of the general plan and not obstruct their attainment. So the general plan is the city's blueprint. It's the guiding document to development within the city. Our general plan has 10 elements, housing, historic preservation, arts and culture, community design, land use, mobility, economic development, civic and community facilities, hazards, safety and noise, parks, recreation and open space, and natural resources and conservation. The capital improvement program, the review of the items in the capital improvement program looks at three different categories. There are new projects that are projects that have generally have not been analyzed for consistency with the general plan. There's ongoing or carryover projects. And these are projects that have been reviewed in a prior year and they can be projects that are just a multi-year, it takes multi-years to complete them. They can be projects that are maintenance of existing facilities or replacement of worn out items. And then we also have, oh sorry, we also have maintenance and improvements to existing facilities. And these improvements are ancillary to the facilities that have been reviewed under the previous CIP. So in this annual CIP, you should also mention that these CIPs are multi-year, so they show a multi-year budget and we only review those items that are listed as new items and that are budgeted for the fiscal year 2023 cycle. And when I look at these items, I look at a lot of the things that are listed as new items by the individual departments are actually new items for the department because they require a new purchase order, but they're not actually a new project. They're an existing project that is, this is a new part of it or it's a new funding source. So in this budget, there were four items that we considered for consistency with the general plan policies. The first of them was the Bay Drive, Protected Bike Lanes and Pedestrian Path. And I'm not gonna read each and every goal, policy and action in the general plan, but as you can see, it is consistent with a number of our policies. And I think there are a number of people who are looking forward to having this project completed. The second project is the Hygiene Bay Repair. And this is actually an existing facility, but it has not been used for a number of years. And so we considered that that was an adequate reason for a new review. And this also, as you can see, answers to a number of our goals, policies and actions in our general plan. The third item is the Navigation Center phase two. And this is, although we're calling it phase two, it's actually a new process. It's a master plan design charrette for a larger Coral Street campus for our homeless services. And so that is gonna be a pretty significant project for the city. And then the final project on here is the Safe Parking. And that is to establish a publicly accessible dump station for the tanks from RVs for people who live in their RVs year round. And that also beats a number of our goals, policies and action. So in reviewing the CIP and comparing it with the general plan policies, we have found that it is consistent with the 2030 general plan. And we recommend that the Planning Commission by motion make the following finding. The Planning Commission finds that the city of Santa Cruz 2023 to 2027 Capital Improvement Plan is consistent with the city's 2030 general plan. So moved. Okay, am I supposed to first ask, do any commissioners have any questions on the staff report? And if there's any members of the public who wanna speak and then we move or can we just move immediately? Well, commissioners can make a motion at any time. But normally there is a request for questions. And before the commission can vote on it, the public has the right to speak. I have a number of questions. I'm willing to make it as, you know, they're not really, I don't oppose the motion, I support it, but I do think there are some questions that can legitimately be asked about the CIP. And, you know, I don't know if there's any, if there are any members of the public who wanna speak or not. Okay, let me just quickly ask that question. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak on this item? I'm not seeing any hands raised. Okay, so seeing none. So before we vote on the motion, I'd like to have the opportunity to ask some questions. I was a little concerned with the CIP and I'm wondering, I don't remember that this is the generally way it's done, Catherine, but there didn't seem to be any table of contents. Doesn't this, I mean, I'm just thinking in terms of the sort of ease in reviewing it, it would be helpful if there was a table of contents, I think, for the council members as well. It wasn't in the copy that I was able to download. You know, I don't work on the CIP that's done by the finance department, but it seems to me, you're right, it seems to me in previous years, there has been a table of contents. So I'd be happy to pass that comment on. And it just sort of starts with the fire department, then you have no idea what's coming next. Some projects show how the projects are gonna get financed, other projects don't. I just kind of found the document much less useful than it's been in the past. So I just wanted to bring that to your attention. I had on page 75 a question or concern about the rail trail segment seven phase two project. And I would raise a consistency question around a general plan, because as I remember the general plan, one of its, it has policies to protect neary lagoon. And in the original proposal for this project, there was gonna be a fence between the tracks and neary's lagoon given the misuse of the lagoon by campers. That was not in the final construction drawings, because I think it wasn't considered part of the trail. However, I think for this project to go forward, it should include a fence along the tracks between the wastewater treatment plant and the why in order to preserve the, not preserve the lagoon, the quality of the lagoon, and which would make the project much more consistent with the general plan, which it generally is. So I would appreciate if you would pass that on. The CIP is pretty confusing about who's responsible for neary lagoon. There are no parks projects for neary lagoon. And there's only one very general project in public works. And I know the wastewater fund helps fund neary lagoon ongoing operations as well as capital projects. But there are no specific capital projects mentioned and there are a number of capital projects that need to be done. One of them including a grant that carrying out of the grant that the city received to rebuild the boardwalk. I'll be clear about my bias. I live adjacent to the lagoon site and I walk around it on fairly, several times a week. And I'm very concerned about how it's cared for. So I would appreciate if those concerns are brought to the attention of the two departments. It's pretty much the public works department, as I understand it, goes out the money, but the parks department actually does the projects. But none of the projects are listed as parks. There are no parks department projects listed as neary lagoon projects. And I think that that is kind of not a helpful way of dealing with the needs of the lagoon. And I think some of them do would legitimately be CIP projects and should be listed in the CIP. That said, I did wanna make a comment about the Bay Drive bike lane improvements. I've been teaching a class this quarter and I've been riding my electrical bike up to campus. And riding down Bay Street is where it's probably one of the scariest drives that I've done. You would think it's safe because you're going downhill, but the bike lane is terrible. So I've actually started going over to Laurent to go down the hill because it's much safer. So I think this project will be a huge benefit to bike riders. The going up the hill is good. They just cleared out the bush. So it makes it a lot safer. And once you get on campus, the bike lane is up the hill is great, but going down that section, I'm glad it's been recognized as a real problem and it's being corrected. My sense is it's probably the most dangerous bike lane in the city because bikes go fast, cars go fast and there's not much room and it's uneven. The path is uneven. Very happy to support that. I also am very happy to see that the rail trail segment seven, phase three project is in the CIP. This would continue. This would be essentially the last phase of the rail trail in the city. It's a tricky one because it has to go over the Antonelle pond, but it would really help connecting the city's rail trail to the rail trail going up to Davenport, which now exists between the city boundary and Wilder. And hopefully in the next couple of years will be continued on to Davenport. So that's an important connection. I was happy to see it in the CIP. I would ask questions about a couple of the other projects, but Catherine, since there's nobody here from Public Works and there's nobody here from Parks, I don't know whether it's worth asking about the status of the San Lorenzo River Mouth Project, which money is in the CIP to be spent this current year. I saw some people out there this morning that they looked like they were getting ready. It would be good to know that finally that project is gonna be constructed. It's really an important project. And the Bay West Cliff Drive intersection improvements are listed as if they're gonna be done in this year. It's unclear. There seems to be money set aside. That's another important project. And it would be useful to find out if in fact the project is going to be constructed either as a roundabout or a traffic signal. It's confusing because it refers to some of the financing coming from the Bay West Cliff Development Project, which as I understand it is still stranded at the Coastal Commission. So I don't know when that's going to be acted on. And if the staff is waiting for the main project to build that intersection, it probably isn't realistic or it may not be realistic to show the project is happening in the 2021-22 fiscal year. So it would be, if possible, I'd appreciate getting kind of maybe an informational memo on the status of those two projects so that not just for me, but for the commission could really understand better what's going on with them. Unless of course you know. I don't know, but I will look into it. I do know that we have had gotten funding from the Coastal Commission for other projects and while we have had trouble getting our approvals for projects through with them because they're extremely, the local office is very shorthanded and has been for quite a while. The funding has been, the funding stream has been quite fine because that's coming from the state office. But I don't know the state of that project whether it's, I don't know where it is. So I can talk to the people who are working on that and find out and then report back to you. Thank you. Those are all my questions or concerns that I'm happy to support the motion on the floor. Okay, so yeah, so I guess the motion has already been made. Is that correct? So we can just, would anyone like to discuss the motion? We have a motion and a second, obviously. So that was, we just had some discussion there. So. Well, I just love the CIP because you see all the awesomeness that the city is working on. And like if you do this for 10 or 12 years like things work their way from the bottom. Oh, that's just the best thing ever. So I'm appreciating the park stuff. I don't have any questions, but oh, the park's right on. So that's all I have to say. Yeah, it really represents an enormous amount and many years of work. And it's exciting to see all of these projects coming to fruition. Thank you for sharing them as well. Okay, so I think there's a lot of appreciation of that. And so if there are no more public comments and discussion, can we have a roll call vote on the motion on the floor? Hi. Hi. Hi. Okay. I think the motion passes unanimously. And thank you so much to the planning department and Catherine Donovan for your presentation. Really appreciate it. And all the work that went into this report. So I think we're gonna move on then and the next item and the next item on our agenda is to actually continue an item, there's a recommendation from the staff to continue the zoning ordinance amendments to title 24 until the next meeting. So there's no staff report on this item, just a staff recommendation to continue the item. Would anyone like to speak on that recommendation to testify on this item from the public? Okay. And so yes, Catherine Donovan will call on you first and then Commissioner Conway. I just wanted to say that we're actually continuing this item to the July 21st meeting, not to the next meeting. So my apologies, continue this item to the July 21st meeting. So does the public hearing have to be opened since it's a scheduled public hearing? It could test. I don't think we can respond to the content but we could hear what someone had to say if the chair would like, is my understanding. Okay. So are there any members of the public who would like to speak on this item? Okay. I'm not seeing any. I would move the staff recommendation. Second. Okay. Any discussion on the motion on the floor? Seeing none. Can we have a roll call vote please? The motion passes unanimously. So wonderful. So we have done our second action and I think that that means I can now close the public hearing, public segment of the hearing. And we are going to move on to information items. And under information items, the only one that I see here is the informational report on city council actions relating to the annual housing element and general plan progress reports calendar for the calendar year of 2021. So on that item, can we have a report from the staff on that information item? And that's me too. Thank you. So this was originally scheduled. Well, it's been moved back several times due to, we didn't want to have a meeting for just this one informational item. So, and then it's been quite a journey for this item. So let me see if I can do a better job of sharing my screen this time. Oh, it still wants me to show you my screen saver. I'm seeing the PowerPoint, but not the slideshow. Still the PowerPoint, but not the slideshow. Don't know why it's being done. I'm terrible with PowerPoint, but it's one of those buttons on the lower right. There you go. Okay, I have two screens and somehow that just makes it a lot more difficult. Okay, so this is the general plan and housing element annual reports for 2021. We have state recording requirements. One is the general plan report. The second is the housing element report and there are new requirements for that housing element report. They keep adding more requirements. That I have a love-hate relationship because they're extensive. They make a lot of work for me. On the other hand, they provide us with a really great amount of information. And it's important for us to do these reports, not only because they're legal requirements of the state, but also if we don't do them, we are not eligible for a number of state grants, including housing grants. And these reports have to be reviewed by city council and then submitted by April 1st to both the Office of Planning and Research and to the Department of Housing and Community Development. And we've made our deadline this year. So the general plan annual report, we reported on a number of departmental implementation projects, including objective standards, the rail trail, the city arts recovery design program, a number of housing programs, the street smarts program or resilient coast program and the ghost antiques program. The housing element report, you're all familiar with the regional housing needs allocation and the process, which is that it comes down from the state to the regional agencies, the regional agencies disperse the housing amongst their jurisdiction. This reporting period runs from 2015 to 2023. It's normally an eight-year period this year. This cycle, they added an extra year in order to align this report with the regional transportation and strategic planning. I've forgotten the name of that one, I'm sorry. But anyway, to align it with this other report that comes every four years. So for the 2015 to 2023 cycle, we were assigned 747 units. And we have recently seen the numbers for the, we've gotten the draft Rena numbers for the next cycle, the sixth cycle. And that is almost five times the number. It's 3,736 units. So while we're still working in the fifth cycle, we are anticipating the sixth cycle. And this table shows you where we are in meeting our fifth cycle, Rena. And as you can see in the second green column, we have met all of our Rena totals except for the very low housing, very low income housing category. And as explained in the report and in this other chart, we are very close to meeting that total. And we have enough units in the pipeline that we anticipate getting that 123 and possibly more units prior to December 2023, which is the end of our cycle. ADUs have really helped out. We've had a steady number of ADUs in the last two years. We've accelerated that number. So we depend on those ADUs. We, in order to figure out how they fit in with the income levels, we did a new survey in 2021 that was designed specifically for the annual report. We had done a survey previously that was designed to answer questions for our ADU update of our ADU ordinance, but it didn't have the exact information we needed for the report. So we redesigned that survey and got better information. And with the responses that we got back, we calculated both an average or mean and median rent and categorized our, the ADUs based on that survey with those, with the median and mean compared to the HDD required rents. One thing we found with this survey was that we had approximately the same number of responses from people whose ADUs were utilized for family members at either very low or no rent as we had that were being rented out to other households. We also had some ADUs that are being used as guest housing, not short-term rental, but for family members who are coming to visit. And, excuse me. One of the questions we asked is, how do you plan to use your ADU in five years from now? And most people had plans to use it in the same manner that they currently were either for family members or as a rental. Additional projects that did not show up on the annual report this year because nothing, they didn't get an approval or apply for a new permit this year are the 119 Coral Street Project, which includes, it's 121 units, total 120 of those would be very low income units. We also have the 118 Pacific Avenue Project, that's what we call the Pack South Project. The total of 70 units, 59 would be very low income, 10 low income, and one managers. And they have applied for their permits, they're very close to getting them, but I checked today and they have not been issued yet. We also have the Cedar Street Family Apartments. With a total of 65 units, 35 very low and 29 low income and one managers unit. And then the Library Mixed Use Project, which would be 100 to 125 units. And they would all be extremely low, very low and up to 10 low income. And that project is moving along but has not yet made it for its design permit. And I wanted to talk a little bit about how the SB 35 and the arena progress works. So we are evaluated twice during arena cycle, once at the end of the cycle and once midway through the cycle. And at the end of the cycle, which will be coming up in December of 2023, the HCD looks to see if we have met our total arena. And if we have, then SB 35 does not apply. If we've met our above moderate totals but have not met the low or very low, then SB 35 would apply to projects that have 50% or greater of lower income units. And that 50% applies to the base project. So if it's the Density Bonus Project, it does not apply to the Density Bonus Unit. And if we have met our above moderate totals, if we have not met any of our total, any of our totals or proportionate for the midway, then we would be subject to SB 35 or all projects that meet the city's inclusionary requirement. It's the actually, is it all projects that have 10% affordable units, but since our inclusionary requirement is higher than that, it's inclusionary or the 10% and so since our inclusionary is higher, it would be all projects with an inclusionary requirement. And then here you can see the new six cycle arena as compared to our fifth cycle and at the different affordability levels. And you can see that while we're in good shape on our current cycle, and we actually anticipate meeting our arena for this cycle, next cycle is going to be a much more difficult challenge. And we're looking at it and trying to evaluate how we will meet that. And the next step of that process is for our new housing element, which will be, they call it the 2023 to 2030, 2021, but it runs from December 31st of 2023 to December 31st of 2031. So it's really the 2024 to 2032 cycle. We have prepared the RFP and gotten proposals. We're reviewing those proposals and are setting up interviews with the, the top qualifying consultants. The previous housing element we prepared in-house, but since that, since 2015, the state has included significant new requirements for housing elements. And it's just, we need the expertise from the consultants. We also have grant funding from the LEAP and REAP grants that will be used for that, for the consultants contracts. And while we're anticipating that the downtown expansion plan will provide a significant number of amount of housing, it won't be enough to meet the entire six cycle and whether we will have enough additional properly zoned property is questionable at this point. It's possible that we will, it's also possible that we may need to do more rezoning to meet our six cycle arena. And that is my report. And if you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them. Thank you so much, planner Donovan. And so I'm gonna open the floor to questions from the commission and members of the public can also ask questions. We'll start with the commission questions. I'm gonna start with commissioner Kennedy and then commissioner Schiffer. Well, I'm just remembering 2017 when I think we built one very low income unit the year before and I was up here just, I couldn't believe that we built one. So it's just a joy to see all that production. How do we compare on the current arena cycle with like other cities? Do most people do this well? I mean God knows we need more units, but like are we doing better than Huntington Beach or how do we stack up with others? Well, let me just say that generally about 4% of jurisdictions meet their arena. So we are going to be in the top. I think we are going to be in the top four. I think we are going to meet our arena. And I frankly am amazed at how well we've been doing but I have to say that part of that is the changes we made to the downtown plan to increase density, changes in the state density bonus law that have made using density bonus for projects more attractive to developers. And also made it more attractive to developers to provide very low income housing and also something none of us can take credit for and that is the extremely low interest rates on loans in the past few years. So I think that has been a significant factor. I remember the impact of the bigger session on the beginning of the last arena cycle and like nothing happened. So, but I'm really proud of how we've done so far. So then, I kind of feel like it's our privilege to build all this housing in a certain way because I feel like we owe the communities some housing. I'm just excited to do it and I think we should treat it as that and try to go for 100% affordable. It might be a big goal, but it's a reach call. Let's try. So I just appreciate all the work. I look forward to what we're going to do. I don't think there's any way to anticipate all these other state things that we're going to be seeing, but those will probably create some units in single family neighborhoods and things as well. Wouldn't you think in the next 10 years? Like if we do nothing and just sit back and let the state have their way with us some more. Well, I have to say, all the things that have come up to that, we're doing great right now. So, we're doing well. The big change the state made in the past that came into effect this year was SB9 and we have, I talked to the current planning division today just because I wanted to be able to give you the most updated and we still do not have a single SB9 application in and they said they've got, they have about six to 10 people who are regularly contacting them with questions about SB9 projects. It's a little, you know, SB9 sort of defies the regular process because normally you submit a planning application. It's reviewed. If you didn't quite get everything right, then we condition the project and approve it. But with SB9 projects, we're not allowed to condition things. So, they're either gonna have to get everything right or we're gonna have to deny it. So, it's kind of a, we're just figuring out how to do this right now and we're spending time working with potential applicants and some of the projects that I've seen that are peer to me to be a little extreme, you know, trying to do a lot line by cutting off the property at the house ball seems kind of extreme to me, but, you know, that's what the state allows and that's what they had in mind. So, we'll just see how this goes. I think other projects I've seen have been less extreme and look fine, but we'll just see what comes. I should just disclose that one of the six is my house. So, it's kind of funny to be in beta mode on the applicant side of the counter. So, I appreciate working with staff to figure out what exactly this all means. Those are my comments. Thank you. Sure. Commissioner Schifrin. Yes, Katherine, could you bring up the slide that showed that the additional project slide that showed about four projects? I had a couple of questions about them. Are you seeing it now? I mean, are you seeing the slide? You're on your last slide. So, go back and let's see. I can't quite, is this the right one? There we go. Oh, there we go. So, on the 119 Coral Street project, that hasn't been counted towards the very low income total, has it? No, because they haven't pulled their building permits yet. I had heard to an item on the Board of Supervisors' Agenda that this project didn't get its permanent financing and may not be happening. That was pretty shocking. I remember the commission approved it. It's discretionary permit. And it's a really important resource that needs to be constructed, I think. So, I was very concerned to hear that. I don't know, I'm not involved in the financing end of it, but I do know that they are looking at multiple sources of financing, but maybe that they didn't get one source, but I know that they are looking at multiple sources. And I can check in with our housing folks and see if they have more information. To find out the status, maybe we would get in for it next time on the status of the project, because it would really be a shame if that project didn't move forward because its permanent financing didn't come together. Yeah. And then on the 818 Pacific Avenue, Pacific Station South project, you indicated that they hadn't pulled their permits? They've submitted and, you know, I don't know how familiar you are with the process, but normally they're groundbreaking today. Okay. So it seems a little bit strange that they were already digging up the site and they didn't have their building permit. So. Well, I think they're on the cusp of getting the building permit. I mean, I love. They're falling off the cusp. Well, no, they're, you know, it's normal to go through several iterations of comments as and the bigger the project, usually the more comments. And I looked and it looks like they had approvals from most of the departments and we were waiting from waiting for comment or waiting for the final stamp of approval from the plan checking agency that we work with. And I think those are due soon, like towards the end of the day. So they could start demolition of the site without their building permits? They can get a demolition permit that is separate from the building permit. Okay. So that must be what they're operating under while they're. Probably, yeah. Okay. Then I appreciate meeting with you when this first was going to come to the commission about the ADU survey because I was concerned about what I felt was confusion between what was meant by median and what was meant by mean and that using the median income made sense, but that meant that half the people had rents above the median and some of them probably were not low income and some of them were. So I just wanna confirm that in the next survey, and I think these surveys are very worthwhile in terms of determining what's happening in the market with the ADUs as well as how we're doing with our RENA numbers in the different categories. I hope that we will be, I think if the staff keeps the same questions and I hope you do about income that it would be possible to identify how many of the units really are in the lower income category and how many are in the higher, you know, moderate income. Yeah, and it was, I did pull those numbers if I have them right here. Of course, I can't. Oh, here we go. And one of the problems we have is we may get 50 responses to the survey, but people don't fill out all of the questions. They just fill out what they want. So we don't always, and they seem to have an aversion to filling out what rent they charge. Right, so I know it's very imperfect. Even the 50 is not necessarily a representative sample of all the ADUs. So, but since it's the only data that we are able to collect, it's just interesting to know if we're gonna do a survey and we're gonna show the survey results, that to me is a distinction that's worth making. Yeah, so for, excuse me. For studios, two of the seven who responded with prices were above the HCD limit. For one bedrooms, five out of the 22 were above and for two bedrooms, one of the four. And then there were four studios, 16 one bedrooms and two two bedrooms that either charge no rent or extremely low rent. I just think it's useful in presenting that data and tracking it over time to see whether, we're losing that stock as a lower income stock or to the extent we are, or whether it stays pretty stable over time in terms of the information we're getting. Anyway, thank you for doing that. Sure. I don't remember if I asked about the 908 Ocean Street Project. I think I was told that it's now going forward as a flexible density unit project as opposed to the SOU. That's right. But have they filed an application and has it been deemed complete? They have submitted their application. They have a small fee for the stormwater review that is still due and that's the only thing we're waiting for on completeness. But that project is going to require an EIR. So we have put out an RFP and gotten responses and the current planning division will be bringing a contract to council, I think within the next month. Yeah. How many units are they? I'm sorry, go ahead, Matt. Yeah, the EIR contract is expected to go to council in June. How many units have they applied for? Sorry, I don't have that in front of me. The number I remember is 300 and something. I remember it was a lot, but I didn't write down the number on, because that wasn't. Okay, thank you. Those are really all my questions. Okay. Yeah, it's Commissioner Schiffer and it's 378. Thanks, Matt. And this is on what, an acre? Yeah, that info I don't have either. I think it's slightly more than an acre. Sorry, I don't have the exact number. That's fine. I'm sure we'll be learning more about that one. Okay, thank you. I'm gonna call on Commissioner Conway. Yeah, thank you. And thank you for the report, Katherine, and for completing it on time. One of the things that struck me that I just wanted to point out is the change in proportion of the requirement for moderate income units. And I can't remember what the number is off the top of my head. If it's easy, maybe you could flash that with us. Yeah, let me call it that. It's interesting to me that not only, I mean, the whole thing is such a large number of units, but also the required number of moderate, deed-restricted moderate units is important. Those are units that are gonna be affordable to households that are between 80% and 120% of the area median income. So this is obviously any, a lot of mixes of households could qualify there. These are people who are working really important to our community and very much struggle with housing. And when I see that number, I mean, over 700 units, and I also know that we have very few tools to secure deed restrictions on moderate income units. There used to be some funding that was available and that's really been dedicated to deeper targeting, which of course it's desperately needed there. It's all desperately needed. But I think, unless someone has insight different than my experience, our main tool for creating those units are in the subdivisions of projects of five or more units. So it's just a really important tool. And there's a lot of pressure because of the density bonus laws and which means developers can do fewer units that are more deeply targeted. Also a good tool, I'm not knocking it, we need all of the tools, but I think it's gonna be challenging to deed-restrict that number of units this time. And I just wanted to point it out because we're gonna be deliberating on a number of policies that will have an impact on that. So that's one of many things that jumped out at me, but I thought I'd pointed out. Yeah, yeah, I just feel like the whole process is gonna be challenging. About the same percentage. Very big numbers. Maybe I'll raise my hand here. Is there any discussion just to pick up on the point that Commissioner Conway just made, which I think is so important about the kinds of policies that we might have to consider on the commission or in the council and with the commission that might be other communities are using for this. That will be what we will be doing with the housing element. And right now I think we're still kind of reeling over the numbers because they're just so high. And I have to say we didn't plan the downtown extension plan because of this, but I'm really glad we are planning the downtown extension because that is gonna make it at least possible. Whereas I don't know what we would have done without that number because hopefully we'll address about half of the need. And I think there's maybe another quarter of the need easily out there. It's gonna be hard. And we have a lot of really good housing policies, but there's so many things that are so out of our control. Like I think one of the most important things about getting housing is interest rates. And we have no control over interest rate. So if you know of good policies, send them our way. What would be a good process for that, do you think? Well, we will be having once we have our contract with our consultant, we will be having some study sessions with the planning commission and city council. And we'll be doing other public outreach until we get that consultant on board. We don't have a plan in place, but that's a large part of what we're going to be doing. So even if you just send things to me, I'll be the project manager on the housing element. So I can just put all the comments in a file for now. And then when we get our consultant on board and start working on policy stuff, we can bring them out and review everything. And we've been talking with our affordable housing purveyors. We've been talking with other jurisdictions. We've been going to webinars. We've been, you know, this is a national project, a problem. And we're all trying to share good ideas, but it's just, it's a difficult problem. And I mean, I will just say too, on a positive note, I mean, even though the Reno number is very large, it's also housing and we know that we need to build the housing. And, you know, especially us as planners and planning commissioners, I think everyone's excited to plan for that housing. So it's a challenge, but it's a good challenge. I really agree with that point. Yeah, I think we all do on the commission. I think that's one of the reasons we're all on this commission. And so, and we want to support this and come up with policies that are going to make it happen. So that's a really good thing to realize. And I don't know if there are members of the public who have, I have one more question, which was really just on the, I was interested in the ADU discussion and I'm just curious if you do breakdowns when you talk about like very low, extremely low, very low of the type of units that you're counting for those figures, if you kind of typologize. And if you have any data on that, like how many of those are ADUs? How many are different types and what the typology is? You know, I haven't broken it down in that way. I could, the data is definitely there in the annual housing report because it's broken up into everything, but I haven't actually looked at it in those terms. We mainly have used the ADUs as low income. So yeah, they're either low moderate or above moderate, depending on, you know, some years before we were doing these surveys, we were depending on just online surveys of advertised rental prices and those skew higher because the low price ones never have to advertise. And so there were some years where we just, the ADUs went into the above moderate category because they didn't have any restrictions on them and that's what the average prices online were looking like. I see, yeah. The information gathering survey question is another one and whether there's any way of figuring out how to get better data on rentals. It's hard, you know, people are really suffering from survey fatigue, you know, we're talking, we have so many projects going on in the city right now and we want public input and we're trying to figure out how to get that without just exhausting everybody. And the ADUs, that's another, you know, people are just tired of being asked about everything. But we do, you know, the housing division collects annual certifications from ADU owners and so we piggybacked on their process and that seems to be working pretty well. We're not getting as many answers and I'm thinking maybe if we made the survey shorter but you know, I want answers to all those questions. So, let's see, I'll look at it again this year and see if I can tweak it a little and get more answers. Yeah, that's good. I don't need to go into it, but the whole history of the ADUs and illegal units, it's particularly sensitive, I would say. Yeah. Though I completely agree with survey fatigue, oh my gosh, you can spend your whole life just doing city surveys. Yeah, I think maybe some questions are more sensitive than others and people don't want to respond. But, and this could be, you know, a policy dimension to even along with other things. So, okay, but I really appreciate all of the thought that's going into this and that we're gonna be participating in this ongoing discussion on the policy front and we're gonna meet this challenge and we're totally committed to that. And I think I see that there are some attendees with hands up as well. So, we're gonna go now to discussion from the public. I don't see names, so I'm just going to call on the first person I see. You have three minutes. This is, the number is 1408830. Begin, the top of the participants list. And I'm going to call on you and you have three minutes to speak to the commission and to planner Donovan. Thank you. It's 4088307003, you're, we're ready to hear from you. Hello there, this is Darius, most mean. One thing, here's a comment I regularly make at these various forums is the good news about the rena numbers is they don't specify the number of bedrooms, okay? So a studio, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, counts for one of the numbers and whether it's very low, low, extremely low, et cetera. One thing I don't see the city doing and the county as well is promoting and evangelizing the concept of the junior ADU. You know, yes, ADU, the term ADU encompasses both detached ADUs as well as junior ADUs but the majority of the public doesn't understand that what a junior ADU is and what a game changer it could be for housing in this town. Hey, you look at all those large homes in Sebrite, some of the West side, everywhere that there's possibly empty nesters there and by simply closing off a doorway, you don't even need a full 220 volt oven, though, or gas, a hot plate house as a legal ADU, junior ADU kitchen appliance. And by building a junior ADU, the homeowner literally will add so less than $250,000 to the value of their home. Banks won't lend on illegal units. Banks will lend on legal units. So it's when for the homeowner, they just added $250,000 to the value of their home like today's numbers. They created a unit that we can use in the arena calculation and as a landlord, but about 53 units in town, 80% of my phone calls for units are from single people. It's just the nature of the demographic and nature of society. And there's divorces, people splitting up, of course, to students. Many, the majority of housing from my perspective just as a landlord is single people. Perfectly adaptable to exactly what a junior ADU would satisfy. So I'd like to see more just outreach. You're talking about instead of surveys, go out there to the public, say, hey, you basically add $1,400,000 to the value of your home and do something good for the community. And here's how we can do a junior ADU or how you get the process. There was a very good website, Lilypad Homes. I don't know if any of you caught that. It was back in 2016, 17, after the Sonoma fires, the website's gone dark, but they had just a wealth of information, including a lot of junior ADU ordinance. But it's gone now. There's a lot of good information. And I think it was quite successful. Anyway, that's my two cents. Thank you. Okay, thank you. And we are going to go to the next caller. Caller, you're on the line, 408-307-7003, no, sorry, 818-203-4955, I think. You're on the line. 65, yes. You have three minutes. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Okay, great. My name is Candice Brown. I live on the East side. Some of my comments and some are questions, but I'll go through this quickly. Just following up with the previous caller, I believe it's about 400 to 500 unpermitted ADUs. And some of them can meet health and safety measures. Maybe they're not with the proper setbacks, but could be grandfathered in, that's a consideration. I know the rental inspection owners pulled, I've been told 200 to 300 units off the market. You might want to look into that. I have a question, as the number of units, how it's counted, is it counted when permits are pulled? That's a question. You mentioned the project with 378 units. I wasn't sure if that was on Pacific Ocean at 908 Ocean, because that's 408 units, but maybe these are separate projects, so that if separate, that would be 800 units right there. I'm wondering why the city is not appealing to the regional housing units, either in terms of numbers, if they feel that it would be difficult to meet them, and therefore putting us into crosshairs with SB 35, or the other option would be to appeal and to allow student housing to count, or a certain types of student housing to count. I'm also wondering if units can be rehabbed or re-restricted, and if so, if those could count. And finally, why can't industrial man be rezoned? There's about 50 acres on the west side. Be a great place for a student village with a course with the kitchens and bathrooms to meet the housing requirement. And those are my thoughts. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And I'm gonna see, should we have a, since there are a lot of questions from that caller, should we have any response at this point? And then I don't see any other hands up at the moment from attendees. So maybe what I'll do is I'll see, are there any other questions from the public at this point? Okay. So seeing none, maybe we can have some discussion based on the questions as well. And Catherine, I don't know. There's an informational item. Yeah, we're not voting on this. We're not voting. I'm not sure there's anything really to discuss. Maybe we could ask staff to respond offline to the questions that were asked. I'm not sure it's worth taking our time here to miss most of them anyway. Hopefully staff got them, but. Did people get the, well, certainly, yeah, with the minutes, did people get those questions? I was interested in some of those questions as well. Having to do, maybe the question of the rezoning of industrial land, if that's something that is being considered. And the question of student housing is interesting. I wasn't aware of that potentially as well as, so that question, the question of the reason of student housing counting, and then the question, which I think I posed in the last meeting when we were talking about anti-displacement measures and the question about whether kind of preservation methods would count. And I think that you mentioned, Catherine, that it was complicated to have de-restricting of already existing units count towards arena. There is the possibility for that, but perhaps it's complicated to do so. It's complicated. There's a process and what we have, usually the units that we have that preserve, that we do something and they preserve their affordability, they do it for a short period of time and it has to be, I think it's 55 years in order to qualify. So I know we have one project that's, I don't remember how many it's, it's pretty large. And they accept section eight vouchers and they bring up their section eight vouchers every five years. So they keep their affordability, they never get rid of it, but they would not qualify under the HED's requirement. Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, so there are programs like, you know, the Small Sites Program in San Francisco and so forth that seeks to acquire non-dead restricted multifamily housing developments and deed restrict them for extended periods of time, 55 and beyond, those are, you know, and I don't know if that policy, if that approach counts towards San Francisco's rena numbers or not. I would imagine they're pretty sophisticated in their processes. And I imagine that they managed to do that. We don't have the funding to do that kind of a program. And they have a, you know, community opportunity to purchase act and other cities have tenant opportunities. So there's collaborations between community organizations and the city to do that. Yeah. So, but in any case that, but that, I'm wondering if that counts towards rena, if you're able to do that. Yeah, generally, generally, if it's an existing unit, they don't want to see you count it twice, but if you go through enough hoops that you can convince them that you're moving above moderate income unit to affordable, or if you have a affordable project that is in danger of losing its affordability, you know, they've, the life of the agreement is about to expire and you can save those as long as it's, I mean, there are other, there are other requirements also, but that the term of the agreement is the big one. Interesting, I'd love to learn more about that. And that might be really interesting for us to think about. In terms of the question about student housing. Generally, we do not get to count student housing, but, and this is something that has changed since the last housing element, but I know with the last housing element, if they were units that were built either for married students or for faculty, so it was actually a housing unit as opposed to a dormitory unit under certain circumstances, we could count them. And I know that with the last housing element, we consulted with UCSC and they gave us all their housing and we ran through the numbers and we tried to figure out what we could use. And I think we did use a small amount, but it wasn't very much. Okay, and does it matter if it's rental or owner units? Not if they're, no, what they wanna see is new unit, so. Okay, got it. And then the question about the rezoning of the lower west side of the industrial areas. Yeah, I think Matt probably is chomping at the bit to talk about this one. Great, thank you. Yeah, thank you for that question, commissioner. It's really vital that the city saves its industrial lands. They provide a number of good paying jobs and it's very important for people to be able to live and work in the same city, both for environmental reasons and also cultural and social reasons as well. So to be able to provide an area where those jobs can still exist in the city is very important to keep. And we all know when something becomes residential, when once you have housing units built on it, they never go back. So when we have these lands, it's really important to keep them and we don't see any change to that in the housing element process. We wouldn't be looking at conversion of industrial through that process. Thanks. Thank you, yeah. Let me respond to that. I mean, that's the usual staff explanation for keeping vast amounts of West side land vacant. The economic generator in our community is the university. It is a huge generator of jobs. It provides more jobs than any of the industries that were here before ever provided. And it's going to, as it continues to grow, as it seems to want to, it's gonna keep providing more jobs. What it doesn't provide very well is housing either for its staff or for its students. The West side is a very appropriate place to put housing for students and for faculty and for staff. It's been done to a limited degree on the Schaefer Road project, but the idea that somehow we're gonna get these industrial users to come and build industrial facilities on our industrial land is just not practical anymore. It doesn't reflect our economy and it doesn't reflect the reality of the university and what the economic impact that it has and as well as the housing impact that it has. So I know that the staff is dead set against converting the industrial land and it's going to take a change in the council where there's a recognition. There are also problems with converting the West side land because the road system is not a good system. And Delaware, people who live out there already feel this too much traffic on Delaware and nobody can argue that there's too much traffic on mission. So it's not, there's no question that there's some real problems with having higher large-scale development on the West side. But let's face it with 3,700 units that we're supposedly going to be planning for, it's gonna have a huge traffic impact on throughout the city. 1,600 units downtown is going to have a big impact on traffic on Laurel Street and on Front Street, non-Pacific. And if we think nobody's gonna be driving the cars downtown, I think we could make the same argument that fewer people who are going to the university are gonna be driving their cars around. So this is not the place to have this argument because we've had it many times before, doesn't go anywhere. Ultimately, it's a political problem that the city council is gonna either deal with or not deal with. But I just couldn't resist having, I just could not respond to the staff comment that somehow this industrial land is gonna be used for industries because I've been here for quite a while and all I've seen is the industries leaving and the vacant land remaining. I do just wanna follow up on that point and say that our recent commercial and industrial project on Delaware is actually seen job growth and people are moving into that site. So it certainly is happening. And it's just important to just remember generally that industrial isn't just heavy machinery and manufacturing, it's also research and development and any number of things that are also even tangential to our university and to our nearness to tech as well and having that capacity in the city to allow for growth in those areas. I wanna ask when that project was first approved and how much of it has actually been constructed? But it's still a place to go. I'm glad you brought it up, Matt. I was about to bring it up too. That's a fine example of flex zoning in what was originally an industrial area. It's the 23rd lead certified neighborhood in the world. So I think it's going pretty well. Of course it could go faster. And in talking about live workspace, are you thinking of having Matt having industrial zoning for tech that is also connected to housing? Like having people able to walk to work on the lower west side or bike to work? I mean, is there any idea that with the industry that there's a mix to use kind of possibility? It's not typically mixed in that way, just given what can happen in industrial zoning. So there could be an opportunity for a flex zone, but it would likely not be in our current industrial zoning. Yeah, I think this is an important conversation to have in thinking also about traffic flow and proximity to the campus and the possibility for thinking about that space. While I appreciate the point about the importance of industry and jobs. So yeah, well, I think that there may be, and this is not for today, but I appreciate all of the discussion that we've had so far. I think there's a lot of excitement in thinking about policy and helping us all to meet our renegals. So I think this item has no action, so we can move on. I guess I have also the question if the staff has any other informational items that they'd like to share with us today. I have nothing, Matt, do you? Yeah, I'll just briefly mention what's upcoming on the planning commission calendar. As you know, the zoning amendment package that was to be presented today will has been moved to July. At our next meeting on June 2nd, we have the 555 Pacific Avenue project, the developer agreement coming forward on that. And then also 109 South Rapetta, which is single family development. And then the big one of those, the objective standards part one of two parts and we'll be focusing on the design standards at that meeting. And then the following meeting on June 19th will be the part two of objective standards, which we're focusing on any additional discussion on design standards, but also the zoning amendments that will be going forward with those. That's it. Matt, are any of those objective standards applying to single family? No, these are currently for mixed use and multifamily projects. Looking forward to that one, it's gonna be a long one. Thanks very much. Any other questions about or responses to the information items in upcoming meetings? Okay, great. So thanks so much to Matt and Catherine. And let's move on to subcommittee advisory, body, oral reports. Are there any of those before us today? I think perhaps there are not, not fair to say, okay. So are there any items referred to future agendas? Maybe we kind of talked about that, but so we don't need to go over that, okay. Being as there are no more items, we are adjourned officially. Thank you.