 So I'll turn this over to the planning commission chair who today is Rachel Dan. Good morning chair Dan. Good morning, Lizanne. Thank you. Can we have a roll call please? Yes. Renee Shepherd. Here, thank you. Allison Violante. Here. Lisa Sheridan. Here. Judy Lazenby. We don't have Judy today. And chair Dan. Here. Thank you. Before we move on to item two, I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge, have two newish commissioners in our meeting today. Allison Violante who has actually been on our commission for quite some time as an alternate and Lisa Sheridan who I believe this is our first meeting. Just ask very briefly, Allison and Lisa that introduced themselves and Allison is the more senior of the new members. Maybe you could go first. Of course, happy to thank you chair Dan. So I was appointed about a year ago as you mentioned to the planning commission. I am an analyst or supervisor friend and I'm the point person on land use issues. So that's a little bit about me and I'm delighted to be here. Thank you so much for allowing me to introduce myself. Thank you. Lisa. Thank you, commissioner. Lisa Sheridan. This is my second time. I think it's been a while, maybe a year since I joined you. Retired from a real estate career, lots of political activism, environmental issues have always been a big concern for me. Great. Thank you very much for joining. Thank you. Okay, can we move on to items to additions and corrections to the agenda. Yes, there's one change to today's agenda item seven application 211280 has been removed from the agenda and this will be renoticed for the July 13th hearing. Thank you. And is there any item three is a declaration of expert take communications. Is there anything commissioners would like to disclose at this time. Okay, seeing nothing we can move on to item four, which is oral communications. This is the opportunity for any member of the public to address the commission on items that are not on today's agenda. Ms. Jess, is there anyone waiting to do that. I'm not seeing anybody who has their hands raised but just again to remind you if you would like to speak, please raise your hand by selecting the hand icon on your home on your zoom link or if you're calling in my phone to select star nine. I'm not seeing anyone are you seeing anyone Mike. Okay, well, we're not seeing anybody. Okay, great. Let's move on to our consent item. If anyone would like to discuss this item. Excuse me, I realized I was interrupting but I do actually see a hand up from the. Okay. Yes, I do. I see someone who is one of our ends in two nine one five. And their hand I do see their hand raised. I'm sure we that public gets the chance to speak before we move on. Oh, you're right. Thank you for. Yes, this. So if your phone number ending in two nine one five, please press star six to unmute yourself. Good morning. If you would like to nine one five phone number two nine one five you have your hand raised. They have to be taken out of the participants status and be promoted to temporary panelists. Yeah, there they are. We can hear you now. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. And thank you to the commissioner. I think it was commissioner via a lot of things who pointed out that I was raising my hand repeatedly. So thank you very much. Good morning. This is Becky Steinbruner. I'm a resident of rural laptop. I concerns that the public comment for the draft EIR of the county's sustainability plan closed on May 31st. I and a number of other people did request an extension of public comment time that I have received no notifications and have not seen anything on the planning department website that public comment has been extended. I think it is unusual that public comment would close before your commission even reviews that document publicly. So I request that the plan commission send a letter or notification of some kind to the planning department. I guess it's got a new name now. Redevelopment commission or department or something to re open if it has closed the public comment for the draft EIR of the county's sustainability plan and general plan update and to extend it at least another 60 days. This is a huge document and it was released at the same time as the other portion of it. The sustainability plan and recommendations for regulatory changes. It is a huge amount for the public to try to grasp even with the public hearings which were not well attended at all. And the document the hard copy of that document did not even make it into the reference section of the capital of public library until all of the public hearings had been held and there was really no opportunity. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. And Ms. Josh neglected to mention this we have quite a long meeting today with many participants and I'd like to limit public comment to or allow public comment for two minutes per person. Okay. Okay. So, is there anyone else for all communications. I'm not seeing anybody else Becky your hand is still raised but nobody else. Okay great. And so let's move on to our consent item that this someone anyone wants to discuss this item, you have to make a request to pull it at this time. If not, I will make a brief comment and thank. Mr. Carlson for preparing the staff report on this item this was something that I requested at a previous meeting, based on some concerns about fugitive best for this project so I just want to note my appreciation to Mr Carlson for looking into the matter and preparing the staff report for this consent item. There are no other comments. So, I don't want to slow things down but in Michael tell me if I'm wrong and I just missed it but I didn't see any step summary on that that I miss it. And it was emailed to us. Okay, I want to read it to and I didn't, I won't slow things down today, but Michael, could I ask you the favor of sending it to me again. Yes, I'll do that. Okay. If it meets Rachel's approval then I'm sure it will be me but I follow it too so I want to make sure I read it thank you. And I, and I also want to say Dave. I appreciate David the timing effort he puts into all four issues both pass and present. Good job. So I'll be looking for a motion. I'll move. We approve the consent agenda. Thank you. I do see a hand up and I want to ensure we take, I believe you have to take public comment even on the consent agenda. Yes, we do. Okay. Yes. Bill Henry. Can you please unmute yourself. Bill, if we got Bill. How about now you got me. Yeah, we got you. Hello. Thank you chair and commissioners I appreciate you taking my call on public comment. I'm Bill Henry. I'm a Davenport resident where I live there with my daughters and wife. And thank you, Mr. Carlson for preparing the staff summary. Overall I'm supportive of remediation of the cement plant but not at that expense of environmental and public health. I've been associated with poor environmental quality and the Davenport cement plant is no exception. Local activism dates back to reduce dust dates back beyond the 1950s with several successes including installation of dust remediation equipment. Historical work. The plant has lacked dust control such as removal of the ball mill and demolition of a 12,000 square foot building and tear down of smokestacks that were in the plant proper and during this period. There were no water activities to reduce dust and I experienced dust in my lungs and burning my eyes and got no response from m barred on complaints. I did submit a recent complaint and video that's dust up deposition on private properties and observations of these activities on of dust creating activities at the cement plant doing that during the CKD dust remediation. And they lacked dust control for whatever reason and I found the staff report was rather dismissive to some extent, but we need to have better dust control, especially with ongoing as ongoing remediation occurs. And off the cuff calculation show that based on the deposition that we witnessed over 1.5 tons of dust were spread across federal lands including coho and steelhead bearing San Vicente Creek so that's important to the water board. We need to have water on the moving blades of equipment and more use of dust control measures. And it's not acceptable and we were told that dust would not be transported off site. And I know this is really hard, but we do have increased winds in the downport area and climate change are only going to exacerbate that. So we need to make sure that we employ dust remediation activities and have a wind cut off that is reasonable to decrease dust. I really appreciate you taking my comments. Thank you. Are there any further comments. Seeing anybody else. Then that there are several more hands I think I see the screen went to the timer and I'm unable to see that right now. There we go. All right we have Celeste. Celeste please unmute yourself. Oh there we go. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for taking my comment. I'm a resident of Santa Cruz gardens and I wanted to speak to the change in zoning for the in the proposed general plan for the corner of Thurber and so Cal drive. Give me Celeste. I think you're making a comment on an item that is further along in our agenda. Oh, okay. So yeah, we're a little bit different than the board. So you have to wait. It's number 10. Okay. Thank you very much for being here and we'll we will get to that item. We'll call on you later Celeste. Thank you. Thank you. This is only for comment regarding item number five. Do we have other the comments I have a Brian McElroy. Brian if you're commenting on item number five. Can you please unmute yourself. Hello, can you hear me. Good morning Brian stage please take a name for the record. Brian McElroy resident of Newtown Davenport 13 1st Avenue. I've followed this project from the very beginning and you know appreciate all the effort and conversation there's been around dust that I want to reiterate. Bill Henry's point that dust mitigation measures have not been adequate. Neighbors on San Vicente road have dust in their homes in their backyards and have been dealing with dust. Throughout this entire project, the air quality district had encouraged a wind speed limit on this project that was apparently not implemented as a mitigation measure. And I think that would have been critical because we as bill pointed out we have had very high winds this spring and the project has been ongoing during those high winds. I know this project is getting close to complete. And we're all looking forward to it being done we all understand the need for this project and we all want it done. But I would encourage that the planning commission implement more stringent mitigation measures on dust control, and that one of those measures should always include a wind speed limit. And any future projects in the Davenport area associated with the cement plant should have a wind speed limit on it. So, please, let's take learning from this instance into future projects let's apply the learning we have now to the remainder of this project if possible. But primarily let's take our learning into new projects and let's have more stringent mitigation measures on dust control on any project related with the cement plant in Davenport. And thank you for your time. Thank you Brian. Do we have anybody else can we go back to the main screen please. I have one other hand raised this is again phone number 2915 I believe that's Becky Steinburner could you please press star six to unmute yourself Becky. Becky Steinburner can you hear me. We can hear you Becky good morning. Thank you. Good morning again. I also want to second the comments before me about wind speed. I remember participating in this issue when it came before your commission. And I do remember that there was a lot of discussion about wind speed. One of the comments I made at that time that there be on site a anemometer that would give objective data for determining the wind speed and then it'd be a determining factor of when it could move forward or not. I'm disappointed to hear that it is a problem. I'm concerned in the staff report that it it basically dismisses the importance of this. It says it should be noted that any dust generation in the area is not necessarily going to be all AD. And I feel like that is allowing this this contractor to skate free any construction project has dust mitigation requirements. And it seems to me that this contractor being held accountable. I would like the commission please contact their control resources board. It sounds like the residents had no luck and no response. Normally that agency is very responsive. So I would like your commission to follow up with the air quality control board on this issue. For the protection of the health and safety of those who live near the site. Thank you very much. Thank you Becky. I see no additional hands raised on this item and if you did have your hand raised could you please lower it so that we can. And then raise it again when you have further Brian you've already spoken so. Well, thank you. David in. Is he here could he give maybe a brief summary of what he had to say about these issues. Yes. David. Good morning. Please unmute yourself. Thanks. Hello. Can you hear me. Yes morning David. Okay, I mean I can give a brief summary of my report. Contrary to what the last speaker just said there is extensive dust monitoring and mitigation measures being implemented on this project. And it's frustrating when people are able to get up and just say whatever they want about that. Without actually reading the report where it is listed. What all that actions are being taken by the contractor. There's a air quality monitoring system out there. There are animometers taking wind speed measurements. So I just wanted to say that in response to that last speaker that frustrated me a little bit there. I'm in David if I can just also add, I believe you've also been in communication with the contractor and with the airport is that correct. Yes, I have been in contact with the contractor in the airport. I was out there yesterday observing the status of the project there. They've got the CKD landfill at final grade and they are well on their way to covering it with the geotextile fabric which will eliminate the CKD dust issue with that covering. I also implemented some additional mitigation measures since the complaint came in and those are listed in the report as well. I've provided the contact information for the on site staff to the complainant as well as that information going out on a weekly basis to some other community contacts. I started earlier on the project at sunrise to try to get as much work done before the afternoon winds pick up. They've increased their use of the soil binder material that's this material. It's a trade name of gorilla snot and they spray it over the ground and over works over a period of, you know, several days to a week to buying the soil together and reduce dust generation. I'm a water truck and continue to monitor and collect data on dust generation from the monitoring network and also monitor their activities with regard to the wind and actually have been shutting down the project. At times when it's difficult to work and lots of dust is being generated. So there have been a number of days actually where the contractor has on their own decision shut down the project because of because of their high winds and the monitoring data that they're seeing and their visual observations. So that's, you know, a summary of my report. I have data from the monitoring network that I could present if that's if folks want to see that it's long term monitoring data of air quality during and before the project from the monitoring system that's on site and in the local Davenport community. David so I mean I just want to reiterate, we had some complaints. It was brought up. I brought it up to staff staff diligently looked into it communicated with the airport with a contractor came up with some additional mitigations. It's, you know, may not be perfect for the community but but it was addressed so so I just want to again appreciate Thank you for taking into this and addressing the issues to the best of our ability. So thank you for that. Are there any other questions or comments by commissioners. Well, do we want to ask David if he knew Carlson to that he could make this report that we got available to others if they want to see it. Okay, so for anyone who's listening who spoke who didn't see the report. If you go to the planning commission website, you ought to be able to find it. It's fairly comprehensive I just came through while everyone was talking. I think it's useful. I just quickly as so chair Dan. Since we have pulled this item on from the consent to gender and we are allowing public comment I do see that one additional hand is raised do you want to take additional comment. I'm sure. This is phone numbers starting in ending in 9483. Please press star six to unmute yourself. Phone number 9483. Can you press star six to unmute yourself please if you would like to provide comment on this item. We can thank you. Please state your name for the record. Mary Lou Sam's Wiley I live over on trading. I don't approve of them raising the height of the power and everything. Excuse, excuse me. I'm sorry Mary, we're taking comment on the item with regard to dust mitigation in Davenport you'll have the opportunity to speak on this item later. Please, we'll just wait and save your questions for item eight on the agenda. Thank you. All right, sorry. To close the public hearing on this item, and back to the commission. There are any comments from the commissioners. Yes, Mr. Sheridan. Thank you, Commissioner Dan. Just, you know, not being as familiar with the process. Will this come back again on the next agenda meeting so that there's some follow up from this commission on how things are going. No, actually, because this was an item that two meetings ago, as a result of some complaints we heard from the public. I made a motion at that meeting to have staff come and report to us on the status of the project and what additional mitigations and communication could be had with the contractor and the Air Board about these complaints. So this is that report. Kind of addressing the request of the commission. And so we've heard from them and unless there's a motion that would have it come back and that is approved then this, this is that report responsive to the commission's request. I guess my question would also lead back to are the is the community satisfied that these that that something's been done and are you satisfied that there's been progress on it. Well, I guess as I've indicated, it's a difficult project that is going to have issues with dust, no matter how you shake it just any construction project is going to have dust. So, I'm satisfied that that staff has done what we asked them to do as a commission, which is monitor the air quality and performance with the law work with the contractor to like David outlined start earlier and earlier to avoid the high winds shut down when it's really windy. And so, and I know that one member of the public that they were told that no dust should leave the site but that actually was not and never was a condition of approval because, you know, for any construction project including this one. That's not something that that anybody can achieve really. So, so yeah there. So, to answer your question, at this point I'm satisfied. However, you know, the community doesn't hesitate to let us know when they feel that issues need to be addressed and so I'm confident that should the issues with dust get worse or even just stay the same that we'll hear from them, and then we'll have an opportunity to work with staff and the contractor, who also is, you know, on notice that the community is activated. So, I do feel that there's enough communication and with the community and with staff to be able to address issues that come up in the future, should they get worse or should the contractor not do what they're supposed to be doing under the conditions of approval. It's very helpful. Thank you. Chair Dan I would just say that I really appreciate the work of Mr Carlson on this item it is simply a report back it's an acceptance file item it's it's not an action item on behalf of our commission so I would make the motion that we accept and file the report on Mr Carlson's extensive work for us and I appreciate the work of Mr Carlson so I would make the motion that we accept and file this report. Second. Okay, there's a motion in the second all those in favor is signified by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed. Okay, that motion carries forward to nothing. Okay, let's move on to our first scheduled item which is our minutes from the last planning commission meeting. Is there any discussion on this item. Okay, seeing none. Thank you. I have a motion. Actually, I'm sorry, I just have a question. I'm sorry, I apologize, I do actually have a little bit of discussion I would ask the commission to consider that we move procedurally to have our minutes be on the consent agenda in the future. I think that our minutes be a discussion item generally speaking, and I would like to know whether or not this board would be open to this it's a procedural discussion so it's not specific to the minutes but I think it's something we should consider for the future and I'd be willing to make, in addition to the motion of passing our minutes the direction that in the future that these be put on our consent agenda I don't know if that needs to be part of this motion and I think that's appropriate now. I would just like to know Mr. Zezweta could speak to whether or not that'd be appropriate to make as part of the motion or something that procedural it can just be done in the future so Mr. Zezweta perhaps you could speak to that if I need to make it as part of our motion or if it's just something that can be done. at this point, but I will say, however, that just remind me again, Commissioner Villalante, you were present at the last meeting. I'm just, I just don't see the minutes here in front of me. So that was gonna be my next question. So I was not, I did not participate in the last planning commission because I was not advised that the planning commissioner was not present. So I would attended a majority of the meeting, but I had to step out for my primary occupation. So I was not present for the entirety of the meeting. I did go back and review the parts that I missed, but I was not present. So that was my next question. Yeah, so why did I do this? Why don't chair, why don't you ask if we can entertain a motion to defer these minutes until the next meeting because commissioner Sheridan also was not in attendance, I believe. So that would then, if you defer that until next meeting, we could also take up the issue of moving the minutes to the consent agenda in the future meeting. Well, Madam Chair, if I can speak up, I think it's good to have them separate in the way that they are because usually the consent agenda is the consent agenda and anybody wants to pull it off to discuss something, otherwise it's fairly pro forma in the minutes. So commit your separate, start to interrupt you. Just wanted to make sure that we were clear that instead of discussing at this point if we could just table this discussion until it's noticed for next meeting, is that okay commissioner Shepherd? I'm sorry to cut you off there, but this is not something that was agendized. And so I don't think it's appropriate that we discuss it at this time, but if we could move these minutes, sorry, not move these minutes wrong term there, but to defer or continue these minutes till next meeting and we could also agendize this conversation of whether or not we want to put it on the consent agenda in future meetings. Is it, this is not an issue for a public hearing. No, but this is something that should be on the agenda. If we're gonna have a long discussion about it, we might as well make it an agenda item. So let's. Okay, fine. I don't support it. And I can say why in exactly 30 seconds. Okay. And the for now events, the motion that we defer the minutes and then later in the meeting, I'll make a recommendation that we agendize the discussion. So for now, let's, I'll make a motion to defer these minutes. Well, I wouldn't support the motion. No, commissioner Shepherd. What I'm saying is that we do not have a quorum of people who were present at the last meeting in order to pass the current meeting minutes from the June 8th meeting because commissioner Sheridan and myself were not present at that meeting. So I'm saying we should not vote on the meetings from June 8th. That's what I'm suggesting. So I'm suggesting we defer the June 8th minutes to the next meeting. That's what my motion is. Oh, that's fine. Will we have a quorum at the next meeting? I believe we have. We have a motion on the table and it needs a second before we discuss. So it's just a motion to continue the minutes to the next meeting. I will second that. I believe I can second the motions. Okay, now we can discuss it. And I'm not sure. And Mr. Azueta, we have this discussion years ago about whether people who were not at a meeting could vote on the minutes. And my recollection, this was when Chris Chaladin was our attorney that he looked into this and actually people could vote on the minutes. So if you could just review that because we have had this issue before where we've had minutes that are deferred for months in order to get a quorum of people who are actually present. And I'm not sure that that's actually really required. But if you could look into that for us or this item for when this meeting, this issue comes up at our next meeting, that would be great. So. I'm happy to do that. Thank you. I just want to add, I remember what Rachel remembers. That would be one of my reasons. Okay, so motion on the table to continue the minutes. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that. I'm abstaining. I'm not sure where I'm at on this. So. You can abstain. That's great. So motion passes with three ayes and one abstention. Okay, let's move on now to our first scheduled or second scheduled item, which is item eight. Item eight. Good morning. Can we stop by voting Sheila McDaniel to panelist please? We see twice. Sheila, can you please raise your hand and I can unmute you. I'm not seeing Sheila. Is anyone, oh, there she is. Good morning, Sheila. Good morning. I hope you can all hear me. We can hear you. Good morning. Good morning. Okay, so this is Sheila McDaniel, a project planner with the planning department. Working for prior staff, Liz Cramble on this project who is no longer with the department. Just as an FYI, I had read the staff reports and listened to the public testimony and read correspondence. And I'll have more to say to the public regarding public correspondence later in the presentation, but if you could forward the slide, Mike, please. Thank you. So the original project came in in 2017. It was an 85 foot tower. It was revised at the direction of staff and reduced in size to a 65 foot tall mono eucalyptus wireless communications facility. It was scheduled before the zoning administrator on November 16th, 2018. And the zoning administrator denied the project because a mock-up was not provided per the wireless regulations. In addition, the Pilots Association expressed concerns regarding airport safety. Following that decision, the applicant Verizon appealed the project denial challenging the finding for denial because they weren't given specific requests to provide the mock-up as required by the ordinance. And they requested that the applicant, the response was to toll the shot clock to address that issue. So, and then since 2018, the Verizon obtained a no hazard to air navigation clearance from FAA at 65 feet in height. In a second, with no required lighting. In addition, in February of 2020, the County General Plan and County Code were amended to incorporate the airport safety requirements and they were effective in February of 2020 addressing the concerns by the Pilots Association, not the safety handbook standards be included in our general plan. So then prior to the next meeting, the applicant provided the 65 foot tall mock-up placed on the site two weeks prior to the hearing as required. And then the planning commission considered the item on July 8th, 2020. And at that meeting, the planning commission continued the project at the request of the applicant too. So the applicant could confer with the Watsonville airport regarding airport safety issues regarding, you know, air obstruction versus airport navigation compliance. And the planning commission requested staff to provide findings for denial due to aesthetic concerns regarding the mono eucalyptus, as well as staff to address height allowances of the code. And then otherwise height increases allowed under the spectrum act and otherwise safety standards. So prior to the continued hearing date of July 22nd, the applicant revised the project to a 47 foot water tank from 65 feet, reducing that height by 13 feet in height. Or 18, I'm sorry, 18 feet in height. And then on July 22nd, the PC continued to hearing again to evaluate airport obstruction standards as well as for staff to evaluate the 47 foot water tank because that material was provided in very late in the application process and didn't allow the public or the planning commission to fully evaluate the project. And then the planning commission also requested renoticing to include the public email list provided to the planning commission. Next slide, please. The site lies approximately one half mile slightly north but mostly west of the Watsonville University Airport. The project site is located at 682 Buena Vista Drive, approximately 640 feet northwest of Buena Vista Drive down a one lane road on a 2.8 acre parcel located in the agricultural zone district, a designation that allows wireless communication facilities. Next slide, please. And there's an aerial of the project site on the left. As you can see, there's an existing single family dwelling on the site approximately 220 feet north of the proposed enclosure. The property is owned agriculture with airport influence combining zone district. As I previously noted, wireless communication facilities aren't allowed use in this zone district. Next slide, please. This is the general plan scenic resource mapping overlay provided in the GIS. Illustrating that the project location is beyond protected highway one visual resource area and that is otherwise not located on a map scenic roadway protected by the general plan. Next slide, please. Project plan all proposed equipment and the 47 foot tall water tank will be located within a 784 square foot eight foot high fence enclosure in the southeast corner of the parcel. The equipment area will contain a radio cabinets and the diesel generator provide continued service during power outages and emergencies. Utilities serving the proposed facility will be trenched underground from a nearby utility pole. Next slide, please. This is the project elevation. It's most open lattice frame and contains a water tank structure that will be approximately 13 feet by 12 feet in diameter with vertical faux wood slats painted Portobello brown and darker horizontal banding. The tank structure will be capped by a slightly inclined turret roof with a single omnidirectional steady burning red safety light on top. That detail is on the right of your slide. I'm sorry that it's not really legible. I guess something happened when I cut and pasted that but that detail indicates that the light diameter is 5.65 inches in diameter and a height of 7.75 inches with an under three watt low intensity light meeting the FAA advisory circular for the lighting safety standard. Next slide, please. So this slide just illustrates that your planning commission considered previous to this hearing a 65 foot monoclyptus tree. And now it's been revised as of July 22nd hearing. It's now a 47 foot water tank and has been evaluated by staff. And as noted in the staff report. Next slide, please. So there's visual simulations that are provided in your staff report. There's a variety of visual simulations and your commission should note that the applicant provided additional visual simulations including night visual simulations that are attached to the last, the third item and a visual simulation package attachment. And so as you can see the visual sims show the structure. And then you also see the night lighting. And in the far right photo, you can see a circled area item that would be viewed to looking toward the site. I've circled that. And then what you see in green is the applicant prepared a Google viewshed perspective view a Google viewshed of the where the light might cast from the top of the tower. Next please. And then this slide is taken from the Briarwood neighborhood. As you can see in the lower right hand, I mean the lower photo toward the facility, the existing and the proposed daytime location. You can see in the bottom photo of the existing and proposed where the proposed water tank will be located. It's barely perceptible in this photo. And then on the right hand side, you'll see in the upper photo the existing nighttime conditions with ambient lights, porch lights and such. And then below that is the proposed photo. Looking up above just to the right and center of the garage, you can see a tiny little red light, barely perceptible relative to the other surrounding light. Next slide please. This slide is taken at the off ramp, off of highway one at the top of traving on Buena Vista Drive, looking toward the facility. And again, the lower side slide shows the proposed photo water tank. You can see that again, barely perceptible. And then the right hand shows how it's going to appear relative to ambient lighting. And again, it's very difficult to pick out this red light in this ambient environment. Next slide please. I had a question, could you go back and do you got a point or anything where you can show us where it is? No, but I can. So what I, I did this purposefully, quite honestly I did this purposefully because I felt like if it wasn't obvious in the nighttime photo, showing it out to you would make it be even more clear so there the light is. But the fact that you're not seeing it to me makes it clear that it's not, it's very barely perceptible relative to the other light, the white and the yellow light in the ambient area. Okay, thanks. So this slide is taken from the old Adobe road which is located to I believe to the west of the property, below grade of the subject property. So if you're looking at the existing slide you can see the mockup at the applicant place that mockup has been there for gosh two years now for a 65 foot tall facility. And then below that is the proposed water tank and you can see more clearly from Adobe road. This is probably the most the view that will have the most views of the facility. And then to the right again is the existing view at the upper image. And then the lower view you can see the red light on the tank from the old Adobe road area. Next slide please. And then this slide is taken from Buena Vista which would be about east of the property and this site is not visible from Buena Vista Drive at this location. Next slide please. So the code basis for approval here is that why I was communication facilities are allowed use in the agricultural zone district and typically water tanks would be a building permit otherwise ministerial approval because it's a wireless communication facility it's subject to a level five approval. And the applicant has substantiated that there's a significant gap in coverage as shown in the, you'll see that in a minute. In the allowed zone districts it's not subject to an alternative analysis. So there is no requirement that the applicant provide an alternative analysis evaluating all the sites that could potentially provide coverage. And then the facility meets both high height allowances pursuant to 1310 510 D2 exceptions to height in that it meets the 25 foot height exception allowance for water tanks. And it may also be determined to be exempt from height standards altogether pursuant to the height exemption for utilities commercial power poles and towers. And in so far as addressing the airport safety compliance issues that have been highlighted at all the meetings the zoning administrator and the last two planning commission meetings the project meets both the FAA clearance at 47 feet and the FAA is not requiring a light. However, if the light is provided they are advising that it meet the airport advisory for light standards. And the project also meets the Watsonville airport safety concerns at 47 feet or 241 feet above mean sea level and includes a red light as requested by the airport. And again, I just want your commission to be very clear. It's a request by the airport and it's not required by the FAA which is the ultimate authority providing clearance for the determination regarding no hazard to air navigation and no obstruction to air navigation. So it is included as in to respect the request by the airport. The project also meets RF compliance standards. The applicant has provided yet another updated RF report again showing compliance with the FCC RF emissions thresholds. And then finally the project design is the least visually intrusive design feasible as a water tank consistent with the rural agricultural character of the area minimizing visual impacts. And then I would, then this is the course is the subjective depend on where you are relative to this project. As staff, I would say the light is, red light is consistent with the existing night lighting in the area and barely perceptible. Next slide please. Again, the code basis for project approval the applicant has provided their gap in coverage information you'll notice on the left hand side the existing 700 megahertz coverage map shows areas that are yellow and red which are provide only good in vehicle and good on street coverage. The green on the far right shows with the facility that will be good in vehicle, good on street and good in building coverage provided by the facility and demonstrated there is a significant gap. You'll also note that the applicant is provided providing 4G service, not 5G service. That is an issue that the public has regarding this. I'll speak to this more, but the applicant is proposing 4G LTE, not 5G service. Next please. And then again, the project minimizes visual impacts by camouflaging the wireless project as a water tank resulting in the least visually intrusive design feasible consistent with the rural agricultural character of the area. And then again, I wanted to note that water tanks and agricultural structure normally and principle permitted use within the district subject to a building permit only. Next please. And with regard to conditions of approval, staff is recommending that the plans include a red light atop the tank for the Watsonville airport request. It's conditioned accordingly. The project is conditioned to include a red light. And as you noted, the planning commission may strike this condition of desire as the red light is not required by FAA. If it's objectionable to the public. And the project is also conditioned to provide additional landscaping for the screen the facility on the eastern side relative to Seth Baron's property. And the project is also conditioned to require a final approval letter by the FAA should the FAA determination lapse before permit issuance. And then to speak to the Watsonville airport concerns regarding the Spectrum acts what would ordinarily be an allowance for a 20 foot height increase or 10% whichever is greater. The project is conditioned to prohibit increases in heights allowed by the Spectrum act due to the max height of 47 feet allowed by the FAA. And then responses to neighborhood input. I wanted to take some time to go through to talk about a lot of the public input since I picked up from staff before I read the public correspondence and starting with the mock-up there was someone who noted that they felt that the mock-up with the mask wasn't sufficient to emulate what the project would appear to be. And I just wanted to tell this person that the mock-up is required based on the code and this code specifically notes that under 1310 660 D for proposed new telecommunication towers the applicant may be required to raise a temporary mask at the maximum height at the location of the proposed tower. So that the applicant has raised a mask to the standard and that's the extent of any mock-up that's required. The project would have to be approved in order to allow a structure to be built to look like the water tank on the site. So our ordinance tries to allow someone to see what the structure, where the structure will be located, how tall it will be. And with visual simulations, that's enough for us to evaluate. And there's a number of neighbors I believe that provided drone photos of the site showing that they believe there's slope failure. And I wanted to note that's on the backside of the subject property. I wanted to note that the site is not mapped for landslides or geologic faults. And that our environmental planning staff noted shallow slope failure resulting from uncontrolled drainage resulting in erosion along the hillside. This is not intended, this is intended to be addressed prior to issues of a bill permit and it's not a site safety issue associated with the project. And with regard to comments regarding code compliance complaint that they have a number of folks have noted red tags or violations of the county code with regard to equipment, vehicles and structures on the property. I would like to just lay out what the county's process is with regard to code compliance. The planning department is a code complaint driven department and until a service request is filed to code compliance, no actions are taken by the department. However, to preemptively address this potential public issue, I've conditioned the project to require that any actual violations be addressed prior to building permit issuance. But that to note that until a service request is filed by the public, no such requirement will be applied to the project. However, I did contact code compliance, have an email from them. They reviewed the aerials of the property and he said, Aaron Landry, Aaron Landry principal planner for code compliance indicated that if a code complaint came in for an inducted property, vehicles, personal debris, property debris, et cetera. He doesn't think there would be anything to enforce. One, it's zoned agriculture and neglected property ordinance doesn't apply. And then everything appeared to be screened from public view and that equipment on the property appeared to be ag related. And as for the legality of the structures, there's simply, there's an electric permit and the structures appear to be constructed in 1963. So there is a condition should a complaint be lodged and it's verified violation. They'll be required to be addressed prior to issuance of building permit. Another public member made a comment that the ownership of the property, the applicant wasn't authorized to make an application with the current trustee is signature for the application. And I just wanted to tell you, I independently verified that the property ownership is noted as noted by Verizon has, as stated in the appeal response letter, is recorded in title documents with the trustee authorized to make the application on behalf of the trust since the death of the primary trustees noted by the assessor and staff has satisfied that the applicant is authorized to make the application. Also, I would like to note that the public noted that the public correspondence was not included. And I'm absolutely agree with the staff with the public on this. All of the public correspondence from the zoning administrator in both public hearings as well as the current correspondence is now in your packet for consideration. And I apologize that that's not something we try to do. We try to include all our public correspondence if at all possible. And we've had a lot of correspondence regarding concerns regarding 5G radio interference with altimeters. And I just wanted to note that the applicant is proposing 4G, which is in the 700 megahertz range. And if I'm not real expert on this by any means, but I did Google this and confirmed that 5G is in the gigahertz range of 3.7 to 3.98 or 5 gigahertz. And that 5G has limited line of sight and requires towers on every block for deployment. This is a large tower within the 700 megahertz range is not proposed as a 5G facility. So I hope this puts this to rest. And then further it's corroborated by the RF report indicating that it's the 700 megahertz range for 4G. And then some public members have mentioned that they would like to see if the applicant could co-locate on the power pole. I'm going to allow the applicant to speak to this. They did include that in a response letter that's provided to your commission. And then lastly, I believe Becky Steinbrenner mentioned that the parcel is mapped with archeological resources. And I wanted to note that environmental planning staff visited the property, determined that an archeological site reconnaissance report is not required because the existing land use livestock paddock and the small project footprint proposed doesn't demand it. And mapping existing reports have been evaluated however the project is conditioned to require if resources are identified, that project will comply with the ordinance standard. This is a standard requirement. And then last slide please. So this is not, we don't get an opportunity very often to circle back to your commission and show you, you know, after years of public testimony and process and contentious appeals, what a project ends up looking like. And unfortunately, this one is just, I really think it came out fabulous. This is in the La Selva Beach area. It's 48 foot tall wireless facility. And it really just looked amazing. I mean, it matches the green siding and the grass and fits in nicely on the site. And unfortunately, I was not able to circle back with a seventh day Adventist wireless facility that's under construction now, but I will do so at some future hearing. So I want to just to inform your commission that the county is limited in regulating the aesthetics of wireless facilities, the equipment as camouflage, painted a certain color or limited in size and siding location preferences underground of infrastructure and minimizing spacing between facilities of the new communication facilities. So provided the facility meets the RF standards and the ordinance requirements, aesthetics is the only thing your commission can really address. And then further, the county regulations do not require that wireless facility be invisible from the vantage point of surrounding properties, just that if visible from the public view shed that the facility is camouflaged the extent feasible. I was proposed at 47 feet in height and has designed to be camouflaged as a faux water tank. The project minimizes visual impacts to the public. And furthermore, I contacted our environmental coordinator regarding the SQL exemption with regard to concerns regarding the light and the environmental coordinator noted that there's case law supporting the use of the class three exemption included in your packet for this type of development based on two case laws that are cited. Don't sell art parks versus city of San Diego and Aptos residents association versus the county of Santa Cruz. Both Aptos and the San Diego case confirm that the exceptions to the exemptions do not imply in similar cases. The environmental coordinator has reviewed the visual simulations and has determined that visual impacts associated with the light would not be considered significant if the project were not exempt under 15 303 and notes that the light is an airport safety requirement. Staff has recommended you concur with this determination and the fight find the project exempt under class 15 303. However, I do want to note your prerogative as a commission to prohibit the light as it's not required by the FAA. Staff is recommending that your commission conduct a public hearing to consider the project appeal and that you determine the proposal is exempt from further environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act attached to exhibit three A and that you approve application 171213 based on the project plans attach revised findings and revised conditions of approval. And that concludes my presentation unless you have come in questions. Thank you. Thank you, Sheila. Thank you, Sheila for that presentation. Are there any questions of commissioners or staff at this point? Commissioner Sheridan. Hi, thank you, Sheila for such a great report. And I know some of you have already heard this. One of the things that I noted that I hadn't seen in the earlier plans was the relationship of this project to the property line. It looked like it was right on the property line of the neighbor, very close to it. Is that true? No, it meets the required setback because there was a 20 foot setback for all properties, all property setback at lines front side or rear. And did that property owner have a concern about the relationship of this project to the property line? The property owner that authorized the application? The neighbor. Did they ever have, do they have a house or a building close to the property line that? It's my understanding, there is a neighbor. He's probably in this meeting. Seth Baron lives immediately to the east of the subject property. And I don't wanna presuppose his comments. So his house is, I believe, I believe that the public correspondent said, I don't know, is it 600 feet and I'm gonna allow him to speak to that issue, but his house is a distance from the property line to the east. Okay, thank you. And then you and I had spoke earlier about the light, the type of lighting. And I'm curious, you said that this could be an optional vote for the planning commission. And I'm just curious how I really appreciate from the neighbor standpoint, how adding another light, a red light might impact them. And it seems like it's something that would be important for the neighbors to decide on. Some of them might be concerned about planes and whether a plane could be affecting, a crash-related event versus having light, a new light in their neighborhood. So it just seems like it's something that the neighbors, that we would wanna weigh in related to the neighbors. That's, those are my two comments at this point. Do any other commissioners have questions for staff? Could you just go over again, the issue of the light? Why is it's optional? What are the benefits in one of the downsides? I don't quite understand. Well, the applicant is required to obtain FAA clearance for the facility. And they provided initially an FAA clearance, a determination of no hazard to air navigation and that Watsonville Airport remain concerned regarding obstruction standards. And so once the general plan and code were amended to include the safety requirements, the Watsonville Airport still maintain request for a light. It's not required by the FAA clearance, however. So it's a preference of the airport as obviously it's their preference. I would note that the, any other structure at 47 feet would not be required to include a light. So if that water tank, actually, if the applicant had independently proposed a water tank, it would have obtained a building permit and would have been approved without a water without a light. So I'm not sure if I'm really answering your question, but it's in correspond the current package provided to your commission. There's an attachment from the Watsonville Airport requesting the red light and the applicant has provided that red light and staffs in agreement that we should provide safety requirements if they have a request for it. And I understand there's some tension between the neighbors not wanting a red light and I'm kind of just inclined to let it play out how it does and your commission has that option to remove it. It's not the ultimate authority on this as the FAA. So if someone was putting up a water tank there, it would be legal to request one and it would be this high, right? Yes, the ordinance allows for agricultural structures like water tanks to be at this height exactly. Okay, I'm sure we'll hear some testimony in this. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from commissioners to staff? Okay, so at this point, we can open the public hearing. Lizanne, how many folks are here for this item? Right now I'm seeing four hands raised. Five hands raised. Including Seth, who is the, I believe the neighbor based on Sheila's presentation. So everyone who wants to speak, we'll get an opportunity. Everyone will have two minutes to speak just to let folks know we have all received voluminous public comment for this item and others that we've all read through. And then I will also ask after public comment has concluded if it's necessary, our council to be prepared to summarize for the commission where our guardrails are in approving wireless communication facilities. It might be helpful to give the commission just a two minute brief refresher on that issue, just to help some of our newer commissioners. Okay, so with that, we can open up the public hearing and hear from our first members of the community. Now, I'll just start by reminding everybody, and although I do see some hands raised already, that to raise your hand, you select the hand icon on the zoom link or you can press star nine on the telephone. But with that, we'll start with David Witowski. Good morning, David, please state your name for the record. Good morning, my name is David Witkowski. I'm a resident of Aptos. And I thank you for the opportunity to speak with you folks this morning. Can you hear me? We can hear you, David. Thank you. So I wanted to note regarding the question about gap and coverage. We do a lot of work with local governments at the city, county, state, federal level. One of the things that we are working on right now is a lot of digital inclusion. And specifically looking at the question of underserved or unserved areas. This area that is in question per Purdue University's digital divide index is scored at 27 out of 100, meaning that it is extremely, is considered extremely underserved. And this is also related to infrastructure and adoption and socioeconomic index of the area which all contribute to the DDI score. I would like to urge the commission to support this project based upon the fact that this area has a significant gap in coverage, not only as attested to by the applicant, but also as attested to by Purdue University, FCC filings under form 77, a variety of other means all point to the fact that there is a significant issue in this area. And I appreciate the time and I'm gonna yield back balance. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, David. Next caller I will call on is phone number 9483. Please press star six to unmute yourself. Do you have caller 9483 calling on the phone? Please. Hi there, Marianne Sampwiley. I live over on Brady. I was looking at an aerial of that roadway. You mentioned that it's a one lane road. There's three homes on it. Even staff originally was off one of those but with the housing in the back, there's at least a total of three possibly more units back there of people living in them. And that I've noticed from here that every time the people come in to work on the home on upper craving on the north end, they leave large equipment pieces there. A couple of times we've had to call the highway toll to get them to move. I was calling the company that the equipment was rented from. And please don't park on this side of the road because it creates a lethal hazard for me trying to come out from my road to get onto craving and they have improved it. We do have a cul-de-sac but with your one lane there, it's gonna create a problem for the other people plus increased dust when they have to come in and do maintenance. And what steps are in place to prevent Verizon from converting it from a 4G to a 5G because I wouldn't know the difference and such as to what equipment they're putting on there or adding height to it in the future because it is rather off the beaten path to keep an eye on what they're doing. Just my concerns, I believe they can place that tower someplace else and have better coverage for everybody, but that's my concerns. I appreciate you taking the time to listen, thank you. Thank you, Mary. Okay, let's see, who do we have? Suzanne, could I interrupt for just a second? This is support staff, Michael Lamb. I just got an email from the applicant, Tricia Knight, requesting that she be able to give their presentation before public comment. Yes. Rachel, are you in support of that? Yes, absolutely. I apologize that we didn't go to the applicant first. That's easily our custom is to let the applicant make their presentation and speak to the commission first. So, Tricia, please unmute yourself and hear your testimony for the record. And how long we usually limit the applicant to five minutes if that works for them? We had quite a lengthy staff presentation, so I think that should be sufficient. Good morning, Tricia. You please unmute by, you should get in. She may also be calling in. She gave me a phone number ending in 1778. I do see that in the attendee. I do see that in attendee. I don't see the hand raised. Tricia, do we have you here today? Maybe Mike, you could text her or call her back let her know she just needs to unmute. Yeah, why don't we go to another member of the public while we're waiting to queue up Tricia so that we don't lose too much time. Let's move to Seth. Can you hear me? Oh, good morning. Good morning, Tricia. Yes, we can hear you. Morning, I'm so sorry I had a technical difficulty. Glad everyone can hear me. Yeah, thank you for allowing us the time. Yes, five minutes is sufficient. Just a presentation that we've set up for you if I can share my screen. Can we allow Tricia to share her screen please? Here we go. All right, we can see that Tricia. Does appear that Tricia has muted herself maybe inadvertently. So Tricia, if you can hear us, go ahead and unmute yourself. You are sharing your screen. There we go. Can everybody hear me? We can hear you. Okay, unmute, unmute, unmute. Good morning. This is Tricia Knight representing Verizon Wireless for our project that we have titled Old Adobe Road. I work with J5 Infrastructure Partners as a consultant for the permit processing. And I also have my project manager, Tim Adams. And as I go down the line, if you wouldn't mind making sure that they're all visible so that when they do raise their hand, they'll be speaking to different aspects of the project. So if you can see, if you can see them as I go through, that would be very helpful. Next, I have Dwayne Bonham who's our radio frequency design engineer for Verizon. And he can add in. There we go. Okay. Getting some feedback from Seth. Seth, if you wouldn't mind muting yourself. That would be fantastic. Yes, thank you. I'm on phone and the computer. So. There we go. Can everybody still hear me? We can hear you. You're wonderful. And we also have Don Carmichael with Pre-Vigilis who created the photo sims that are associated, the nighttime photo sims that are associated with the project that Sheila touched on. And so if you have questions about the light and those photo sims that are in part of your packet, he's available to speak to those. And lastly, we have Paul Albritton from McKinsey and Albritton who is Verizon legal counsel who will be speaking to various aspects of the project as well. And going on to the next slide, just giving a brief overview of how long this project has been moving along here. So in October of 2014 is when we identified that gap in coverage that Sheila referred to. And then we had a long period of time from January to May where we investigated different locations, all of the aspects of the project that have to line up a lease in that it is an allowed zone for permitting and it's constructible and also definitely meets the needs of the network. We selected the site in May of 2017 and it started with an 85-foot faux tree, eucalyptus tree. And in working with FAA and also with the planning department pre-application submittal process brought that height down to 65 feet. And then we submitted our application and then went before the zoning administrator because as Sheila had mentioned, an allowed zone and meets all the height requirements. And so we went to the VA and unfortunately we're denied due to the fact that there was no mock-up placed on the property. Immediately following that, we appealed erected the mock-up on the property and then at that time, the county was updating its general plan to incorporate state airport regulations per the request of the Pilots Association. So we were working with Watsonville Airport, the FAA and the Pilots Association. And then in July of 2020, we had the planning commission hearings and it was continued to allow Verizon more time to get, provide more information and also place the mock-up. The Verizon Wireless facility before you today is that 47-foot water tank that came down to that height to take in all considerations for airport safety standards. And making note that the stationary voluntary red light was requested by airport management but as Sheila stated, is not required but is part of our current proposal. Moving on to the next slide is to go over that service gap. So we currently already have a Verizon facility here at the airport. It's not, it's not close to the runway but it is at the airport. And then to the left of the screen, you'll see the other existing facility. There's gaps in in-building coverage northwest of Watsonville as well as along the roadways including Larkin Valley Road. And you can see in the middle of the screen here the old, the project before you and you can see the lack of continuity between the airport facility and this is known as our Mar Monte. And so there's gaps in in-building and in-vehicle coverage. Moving on, if you choose to approve this project and one's constructed, you can see that really does fill in the gaps and also to make note in the next slide we'll go over the demand and capacity issues that are also in this area. Moving on to the next slide here. So increasing demand, we're all using our devices as we sit here on this call today. And so you've got actual projected use and exhaustion thresholds which has already been exceeded two years ago. And it's taken quite some time to get to where we are in the permit process. And so Dwayne Bonham, our frequency engineer can speak to this a little bit more if you have questions as we move along. Alternative, so one of the unique things as you know about the ordinance when it comes to telecommunications facilities is there are areas that are prohibited and areas that are encouraged. We are currently in that agriculture zone which is not prohibited but we are surrounded by some commercial, agricultural and special use zones which are. And then to the south here you can see we looked at some properties but we're not able to entertain a lease. And then we're trying to stay a little bit further away from these residential neighborhoods over here. And so that is another reason why we ended on the property that we currently are. Here is the design of that water tank. It is rural in nature in the location that it's in. It's half of the height that's allowed in that agricultural zone. We'll be painting it brown. You saw the as built green tank that Sheila had showed you. They really do blend nice into these areas. You can see from a distance that we've got some trees that are surrounding the area. And so that does add as a nice backdrop at certain viewpoints. And the red light as requested by the airport poses a minimal impact at night as there is existing lighting features over on that hillside. So airport safety compliance. So Watsonville airport supports the 4047 facility which avoids penetrating initial climb area of east west runway and requests the red safety light. And that was in January of 2022. We wanted to point out that it does not exceed obstruction standards and would not be a hazard to air navigation per the FAA letter in your packet from May of 2021. And that the pilot's association does not oppose the project at the proposed height but it cannot have any height increases cannot be approved without going through all the proper channels. And that concludes my presentation for now. And I am, I don't know how many minutes I am but any left over time I would like to reserve for rebuttal after public comment or if you, the commission has any additional questions at the end. And I'm here to answer any questions right now that you may have. Yes, Trisha. Yeah, you can reserve the rest of your time at the to address any comments at the conclusion of the public hearing before it comes back to the commission. Thank you for your presentation. Thank you. So now we can go back to the public. Okay, so the first number I see 9483, was that Trisha? Was that, I see a caller calling him by telephone the last four digits are 9483. Please press star six to unmute yourself and state your name for the record. Hi there, 9483 is me for Mary Liu and I spoke already. Okay, thank you, Mary. Could you please lower your hand? I think star six. We'll go back to the list, please. Can we go back to the, I take down the timer and go back to the list so I can see everybody, please. The next is a caller is at last four digits a 2915. Call a 2915. Can you please unmute yourself by pressing star six and state your name for the record. We can hear you Becky, good morning. Thank you, good morning again. I want to point out that this is going to add a significant fire risk to the Larkin Valley area and it being on a ridgetop, it is especially concerning that there would now be a fuel tank there next to what I assume would be a wooden covered, a far water tank structure. At the very least, this commission needs to require the applicant to add in at least 15,000 gallons water storage tank for fire suppression next to the facility with a dedicated hydrant next to the driveway. It is incredibly important, especially given the wildfire situation in the state that there be sufficient water right at the site and reduce the risk of adding a fuel tank on a ridgetop. I also want to ask that it be stated very clearly that 5G will never be allowed at this site. It is common knowledge in the telecom industry that 4G has a limited life, perhaps 10 years, perhaps shorter. I think even though the applicant is saying no, it will only be 4G. I think that the language in the conditions of approval need to be clear. It will never be allowed to have 5G because of the safety problems known to airport navigation instruments. I see no geotechnical studies to support that this is a stable area. And also there are no additional studies of the wind resistance of this new water tank design. On a ridgetop, that needs to be done to ensure that it will be safe and stable. I see little information about the impacts of the diesel generator on the air quality of those who live nearby or the noise. Those of us that live in the mountains know that noise travels very far. I'm sorry, Becky, but your two minutes has ended. Thank you for your comments. Okay, I'd like to call on Seth. Seth, please unmute yourself. Should be a pop-up coming up on your screen. Okay, can you hear me? Yes, good morning, Seth. Hi, thank you all for taking the time again on this. I am devastated by this, what looks like is going to go through project. It is going to have a huge negative impact on me and the surrounding area. And the photos that were taken were selectively taken from a distance on a wide-angle view shed. If you come down Mark and Valley Road or you come down Buena Vista, you will see this as a long middle finger standing on the ridge. Very obvious and an obvious visual impact that is a deniable factor in your own code where you rewrote it for cell towers last year. Not just doing the best you can to camouflage it, but you have the right, as I understand, to deny this based on that. And also I'd like to see 5G never allowed there. Another thing in the staff report, I noticed that a geotechnical review, one or two phases was required prior to conditioning. And this tower is serving a very small area, a one-mile section of roadway. Will the panel please weigh the detriment to the area versus the minimal benefit of a small, relatively small linear gap filled that quite frankly all the people there really don't have a problem with. I've talked to all of them and they say, no, we're good. I've talked to many people. And so I think that this is a land grab on a cheap lease and a refusal to look at options just because they don't have to where they'd have to pay more to place them on the power poles and a variance for zoning could easily be issued. You guys have done it before. This is the applicant wanting to just get by by not having to pay. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. Thank you, Seth. Yeah. Is there anybody else who wishes to speak on this item at this time? If so, please raise your hand by pressing the star icon in Zoom or if you are using your phone to call in by pressing star nine. I'm not seeing any further hands raised at this time. Michael, are you seeing anybody? I'm not seeing any additional hands, Lizanne. Okay. In that case, I'll turn back over to you, Chair Dan. Okay. Well, I would invite the applicant to use any additional time to make any final comments. I do actually see one additional hand just raised. This is Paul Albritton. This is actually from the applicant team. Oh, okay. So this is part of their rebuttal time. Yes. Okay. Can you hear me? We can hear you. Yeah, no, I was going to take the rebuttal. So I don't need the... This is Paul Albritton for the applicant and I'll speak on rebuttal. Do you want me to do that now? Yes, please, Paul. Okay. Paul Albritton, outside council of Verizon Wireless. Thank you very much for hearing our application today. As you heard, we've been working on this for almost eight years. It's very important to Verizon Wireless's network. And one of the greatest importance is to offload that Watsonville Airport site, which has been overloaded for several years and can't serve the customers that are demanding the service. With respect to a couple of issues, there is no increased fire risk from the generator of these generators. The fuel tank is a double belly walled tank underneath the generator itself in a containment area. And there is no risk to fire from the generator and this type of generator is all over the county and used. If the noise is limited by the generator is only used during emergencies and can only be exercised once every two weeks during business hours as conditioned under the conditions of approval and also is permitted under the Air Quality Board. With respect to a geotechnical and wind load, those are addressed in the building permit portion of the application and will be carefully reviewed. All of these facilities, of course, carefully designed to survive excessive wind load as well as geotechnical report. I mentioned the gap in coverage, the power poles were looked at. Of course, the power poles are unable to hold the equipment that Verizon Wireless needs to place within this facility and are therefore infusible. I wanna make one more comment regarding 5G. 5G is a technology, it's just like improving your Windows software or your Mac OS software in the simple terms, what it does is allow the aggregation of bandwidth so that we can have multiple in, multiple out frequencies at the same time. It can be used on any frequency. It can be used on 700, 800, AWS, PCS, and so there's no risk to air navigation from 5G. The risk is from C-band, which is a new frequency that was recently licensed by ATT and Verizon Wireless in the 3.7 gigahertz and 3.9 gigahertz range as Sheila referenced. And ATT and Verizon have been working carefully with the FAA in terms of the rollout of C-band. We would not be able to put that band on this facility near the airport without further FAA review. That review is going on and essentially deals with is the clearance of filters on the altimeters, on older altimeters on older airplanes. And the FAA is working through those aircraft in order to make sure those altimeters have the appropriate filters. But I wanna emphasize again, 5G is a technology, it's just like upgrading the software on your computer. It can be used on any frequency and 5G will be provided from this facility, but not the C-band frequency, which is the C-band frequency in the future, 5G. The C-band frequency is the frequency of concern to the FAA and Verizon Wireless and ATT are working closely with the FAA to make sure that there's no risk to air navigation. I can expand on any of those issues. And I do wanna point out, we have a whole group of very talented people including Dwayne Bonham, our RF engineer, Don Carmichael who did those nighttime photo simulations of the light. I wanna say that the airport management is the source of their request for the light. And to give you one thought and that is that the light can be approved on the facility and if it turns out to be an issue that you wanna revisit in the future, the light can be turned off. And so it's something that can be included in the plans and if there is an issue in the future could be resolved. And we'd be happy to answer any questions as I mentioned, we have a whole group of talented experts who can answer any questions you may have and thank you for the time for the rebuttal. Thank you, Mr. Albritton. Okay, so Lizanne, if there is nobody left with their hand raised, we can close the public hearing. There are no hands raised at this time. Thank you. Let's close the public hearing. Thank you everybody who spoke. Appreciate you being present and calling into the meeting. So we'll close the public hearing and bring it back to the commission for questions, discussion, and a possible motion to take action on this item. Okay, there I am. Commissioners, why don't you start us off? I'm curious whether, I think it's Seth, the neighbor that spoke earlier, what his viewpoints are on the light, whether he was opposed to the light or wanted it, if he had a choice. I will defer to Chair Dan, but I would say Ms. Chair, Commissioner Sheridan, that this is time for our discussion. We've already heard public comment and this is, I think it would be more appropriate to have a conversation among Commissioner Dan, Commissioner Shepard, yourself and me to discuss what our thoughts are on the light and I'd be happy to share mine. I'm sure Commissioner Shepard and Chair Dan, but we've already had public comment and so. Okay, that's fair. And on the light, my understanding is this is a request from the airport. Right. And then, so before we begin, why don't I ask if Council will just take maybe no more than two minutes to brief and refresh the commission on what our guardrails are when we make determinations about wireless communication facilities? So. Sure, I would be happy to do that. This is Daniel Sosweta, Associate County Council. I'm sorry, Assistant County Council. I'm just gonna read from some notes that I have of some pre-prepared remarks and I'm gonna quote extensively from the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which is federal law. So under federal law, local governments have the authority to regulate the placement, construction and modification of wireless communication facilities subject to certain limitations. So I just wanted to repeat that. So under federal law, local governments are really restricted to only regulating the placement, construction and modification. And among the limitations, local government regulations may not unresimbly discriminate among providers of functionally equivalent services. It may not prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting the provision of personal wireless services. So what that means basically is we can't signal single out wireless communication facility providers and discriminate among them. So for example, if we're gonna say, hey, you can put up a water tower here, but you can't put up a water tower if it has antennas in it just because you're a wireless communication provider. So basically if our code allows for this type of structure to go up, we have to allow it for everybody to put up this type of structure. If it's proper in this place and we've gone through the kind of plan check with our county code. So any denial of an application to place, construct or modify, this facility has to be based on substantial evidence contained in the written record, which means that we need to have a lot of evidence to show that this is not the proper place to construct this particular wireless facility. So, and I have to note that any such denial cannot be based on environmental health impacts of the wireless facility. I think this is the most important distress because this seems to be missed over and over in public bodies throughout the state or throughout the country is that any local governments do not have the authority to base any denial on environmental or health impacts of wireless facilities. Specifically, federal law provides that a local government may not regulate the placement, construction and modification of wireless facilities based on environmental effects of radio frequency emissions to the extent that such facilities comply with the FCC's regulations concerning such emissions. So we have the authority to say, hey, you have to show us whether or not this particular wireless communication facility complies with radio frequency emissions as set out by FCC standards and the standards of federal law. And if they do comply, then there's nothing more we can really say about it. The FCC, the Federal Communication Commission has regulatory jurisdiction over radio frequency emissions and including the impacts of radio frequency radiation from cell phones and cell phone towers. So just wanna reiterate that the regulation of environmental health impacts from wireless communications facilities is a matter of federal jurisdiction. The county has no regulatory authority in this area as a matter of federal law. So county's really limited in regulating just the siting, aesthetics, operation, construction and modification of wireless communications facilities in the unincorporate areas of St. Andrews County. Happy to answer any questions about that. I know it's a tad confusing, but really the federal government has kind of taken the field when it comes to the environmental and health impacts of wireless facilities. Thank you, Daniel. Are there any questions for Daniel? Okay, so let's open it up to the commission and we'll be looking for a motion or discussion. Okay, well, I'll start. I will just say that I believe that this application meets all of the criteria in our code for approval and as such, I would support a motion for approval. But as a chair, I cannot make a motion. So I'll be looking to another commissioner to do that. May I make another comment prior to a motion? Thank you. Going back to the impact of the red light, I understand that it is a request but does not have to be decided upon the red light on top. And I do believe that's an important, I really wanna acknowledge that if I lived in this country setting and I was a neighbor, I would be bothered by a red light in the area. And I think we have to do our best to keep lights down for a lot of reasons, birds and nature. And we know that there's impact. But we also know that people are bothered by lights in their windows and looking out in the country setting. So I would wonder if there was a way, and I think the planner Sheila had mentioned that there might be a way to return to that idea if the red light was something that was bothering the neighbors that they might be able to return to it. So I wonder if a motion might be able to, if there's an approval of this or a motion to approve going forward if that light concept is still a negotiable or could be revisited somehow. Commissioner Dan. Yes, yes, Commissioner Shepard. I would make a motion, maybe we can leave the light in and have it come back on the consent agenda and a requisite amount of time to see if there's been any complaints or issues with it. If they turned off, if they're legitimate. That is one way to go about it. So I would move approval of the staff recommendation with that condition that the light, the red light be installed but come back to us, is then what would be an appropriate amount of time? After construction of the tower. She should be at least one year, I think. Yeah, that sounds reasonable. After a year to hear if there are any issues about it since we have the option of suggesting it be turned off. So that would be my motion. Okay, there's a motion. Is there a second? I'll second that. Commissioner Shepard, can I make a friendly recommended amendment to your motion? Sure, absolutely. Can I suggest it only come back to us if there's complaints? Kind of like so that I don't see any reason for it to come back to us if there's not. I mean, I hear you. I actually think that people who live in this area know they live in an airport district and I would want to air on the side of safety. So I agree with you. I believe the light should actually be kept in and I don't see the reason to bring it back to the planning commission unless there are complaints. Well, I think that's a good suggestion. So I'm amending my motion to say approval of the staff recommendation and in one year if there have been any complaints about it would appear on our consent agenda. And is that manageable for you, the planning department? Yes. That sounds reasonable. Yeah. I mean, I guess it might be nice to- I just have to make sure the seconder of the motion has to approve that as well. So at least you seconded the motion. Is that acceptable to you? That's acceptable to me. Great, so we have an amended motion and a second. Any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, motion carries. Were there any abstentions there? Not that I heard. Okay, I think that we probably need to take a break as per CTV, right? And how long does that need to be for the CTV folks? I believe we need at least 10 minutes. Is that correct? Michael, can you just confirm that please? I would defer to CTV staff. I know we are required a 10 minute break and when possibly a 30 minute lunch break, but I can't say for certain. So if Olivia, you're still on the call, please confirm what your required breaks are. I believe it needs 10 minutes. Okay, why don't we take 10 minutes now? And so that means we will come back at 11.30 and then when we come back, we'll be on item nine. All right, that sounds great. Thank you, Dave Grisha. Thank you. We are planning commission meeting June 22nd. All right, well, Wednesday June 22nd, our commission meeting is reconvening and we are now on item nine. Let's welcome back everybody. So we're talking about, I was just gonna promote Anais LaTisha. Okay, so I believe we're starting with studies, item 10 on the agenda, the study session to consider the sustainability policy and regulatory update, is that correct? And I think we, item nine is the wastewater treatment and sewage, very important topics of sewage and I think- Yeah, you're right, I apologize. Yes. We don't wanna pass over home for initial septic and other things, so, but don't worry Anais, we'll get to you. Okay. I did see that Marilyn Underwood was here. Marilyn, would you please unmute yourself? We promote you to panelists. Morning Marilyn. We can hear you, Marilyn. I think you muted yourself again though. I see you're muted. Okay, I think it launches unmuted unfortunately. Good morning. And I also need John Ricker. All right, raise to a panelist as well, please. Appreciate it. Oh, there's John. All right, thank you. And John, you would also need to unmute yourself. And then I get to share, hold on, I should have been doing that. This is the right one. Are you seeing, oh, not quite yet, I gotta hit another button. Okay, hopefully you're seeing the screen. Yes, I see some nods, excellent. So yeah, so I can hear you're all excited about sewage. So that's great, as it is a really important topic because we do have something like 27,000 parcels in our county, their sewage is treated by an on-site wastewater treatment system. And so, and our water quality is super important. So that's where these two intersect. And we're here before with you with the, both the general plan and County Code 7.38, the Sewage Disposal Amendments. These amendments are in part due to the fact that there's state law and state policy that required us to relook at our ordinance and also general plan as well for our on-site wastewater treatment system. So I'm gonna provide a little bit of background and then get to the ordinance and the general plan changes. But I'm gonna try to, as I speak with you today, get away from talking about septic systems just because they're not really as we are seeing new systems being put out there on constrained sites. They're more and more having to use more fancy equipment than just a septic tank in Leechfield. And so they're really the correct term is on-site wastewater treatment systems. That's a lot to say. So it's been shortened to odds. So I'm gonna, I'm trying to train myself, not just today, but every day to talk about odds, not septic systems. Then the other thing I'm gonna be referring to is the local agency management program, also shortened to be LAMP. So if I used both of those terms, hopefully, you can interrupt me and I'll try to explain every now and then, but those are two terms I'll be using. And just lastly, we are the local agency as seen by the state and the regional board for implementing ordinance odds oversight in our county. So I'm gonna start off with some background and get in, as I say, into the later into the ordinance and general plan changes. So the background is this law was passed all the way back in 2000, AB 885. It basically came about by the state because they were seeing impacts to drinking water in various locations from odds placement. And they felt that this locals that usually determine where land development could be placed were not having enough minimum standards to make sure that drinking water wasn't impacted. So they wanted the state wanted some minimum standards developed. Well, it took a while, a lot of interaction. There were some missteps at first, but they finally passed the state odds policy in 2012. Within that state policy, it required the oversight that we see from the central coast regional water quality control board, which is out of San Luis Obispo County to develop, redo their central coast, coastal based plan within five years. And they did it within five years in 2017. And then also we at the county level, if we wanted to maintain oversight of odds in our county, we would have to produce a local agency management plan that address the minimum standards set up in the odds policy. And we were supposed to have done that by May 2018. We did not do that by May 2018, but the good news is we did get it done last year, October 14th of 2021. The central coast regional board did adopt our local agency management program document that was also called the LAMP and appendix A, which is our ordinance, so which disposal ordinance is appendix A of that LAMP. So in essence, they also were approving our LAMP. We had extensive community outreach and also outreach to our technical assistance group on site wastewater group prior to submitting this to the regional board and we continue to interact with that group as well on this very technical document. When October 14th happened, we were to implement those parts of the LAMP that essentially were required in the state odds policy. So we have been doing that and I will talk later about some of the things that we will not be implementing until that are in the ordinance until the ordinance is adopted by both the board of supervisors and the coastal commission. So why are odds so important is, well, we do only get water for drinking water in our county from pretty much within our county, what falls within our county is rainwater. And we don't import from Hetch Hetch here somewhere else. And yet we have, as I mentioned, 27,000 odds on parcels out there. And so what we know is that if odds are installed, planned, designed, cited, installed, operated and maintained correctly, then they won't have an impact on water quality. However, if some issues of them being too densely spaced, poorly designed, installed, operated and maintained, then you can end up having issues. And these issues, primarily we focus on our pathogens and nitrates, but I will also say that the typical odds system is not necessarily designed to get at those things like pharmaceuticals, some of the issues like steroidal hormones and some of your other things that you often hear about, that even fancy sewer system treatment plants don't address. So again, we focus on pathogens and nitrates because they are the big ticket item, but there are other items of concern in our septic systems as well. And the septic system here is displayed in this image by a cesspool. We don't really allow in the new regulations, we will not allow cesspools, but just imagine it can be a CPH pit or a trench. These can flow and you don't see this at the surface, but they can flow and their contaminants can be released to the groundwater, which can flow into and affect our streams and our oceans. Also you can have surface flooding that clearly can go runoff and go into our streams and surface water. And these contaminants can also affect our wells and obviously the parcel where the CPH pit or trench is located on, but also the neighbors. And all of these things are things we are concerned about and the regulations in our ordinance try to address by minimizing or not having any of those impacts. So this is just a photo, I'm gonna image again of the major water purveyors that we have in our county. And they depend on both groundwater and surface water for their drinking water. And so that's why both of those, protecting both of those types of water bodies are important to us. City of San Lorenzo Valley Water District has both depending upon where you are, uses groundwater and surface water. City of Santa Cruz is mostly depending on surface water, both from the San Lorenzo, as well as some of the area along the coast here, the creeks coastal influence. So Cal Creek 100% groundwater, central water, district 100% groundwater. City of Watsonville in this area, primarily 90% groundwater, but some surface water. And then we have a number of small water systems that means less than 199 systems around the county that also kind of depend on groundwater and surface water, as well as our groundwater, individual water systems that depend on us maintaining and protecting groundwater. So these are the major groundwater basins. I think maybe hopefully you guys are familiar with this just because of a lot of the news around how we have to protect these groundwater basins now under state law, but we've been doing it for many years anyways. There's been a lot of effort on protecting these, both the Pajaro Valley overseen by the Pajaro Valley Water District down there. Mid County now has a sustainable groundwater agency as well as the Santa Margarita and all coming under the state system to make sure these overdraft water basins are protected for the future for people that use them. Not just in quantity, but also which is the main emphasis of sustainable groundwater programs, but certainly in quality as well, the water. These are the groundwater recharge areas, meaning the water that falls from the sky and during rainfall. These are the areas that feed those different groundwater basins and you do notice that they're slightly different, not necessarily absolutely overlap. But again, these are why we can care about these groundwater recharge areas as well when we think about the odds placement. This shows you now I'm shifting to watersheds. So we were talking about groundwater, now we're talking about watersheds, the important different watersheds that again are important to our drinking water systems. And you see the blue that is the primary one, but also these lighter blue as well, very important watershed areas that we need to protect. And this I'm not gonna switch into, well, we need to protect these and partly we already see that there's been impacts. These are, this is a very somewhat dense slide, but I'm gonna walk you through it. These are areas, water bodies, surface water bodies in the county that have already been identified as having contamination in them by their pathogens, coliform, sediment or nitrates, such that we've had to start doing, the regulations have required us to start looking at the sources of them and starting to look at how we can control those sources. So we don't see those impacts. The ones I wanted to draw your attention to, and these are called the total daily maximum daily load, have total maximum daily load have been TMDL, have been established for these water bodies, in particular Pento Lake, you can see that onsite wastewater systems have been identified as the second major source for the phosphorus and cyanotoxins that are being found there. The number one and definitely by a large majority is agricultural manure and fertilizer, but nevertheless, odds being some impact. Then the other two is the San Lorenzo has identified, it has a TMDL for pathogens. Again, onsite systems are the number one source there and the San Lorenzo Valley watershed for nitrates. Again, the number one source. I will also say there has not been a TMDL nest yet developed for South Sepuwaiti's Creek, but the pathogens in the South Sepuwaiti's Creek have also identified as coming from primarily odds. This is just a further illustration and it's a little complicated, but I'm gonna lead you through it. That shows you just the San Lorenzo River. And we're looking at the bottom is the rainfall and you can see the rainfall patterns from 1980 to 2019. Similarly, you can imagine that the flow of the river correlates quite well with the rain. And similarly, due to the amount of fecal coliform and also nitrates measured as nitrogen in the river as well. And the two sets of data you're seeing that we've looked to take samples at big city pre-location and also the city of Santa Cruz, water intake, the green is the big trees. You can kind of, now that we started taking back in 88, the city of Santa Cruz water intake, you can see there pretty much go in parallel, but you can see the red line indicates to you the level of concern. And you can see during the rainy part of the season, we see exceedances at both locations in fecal coliform. Some of them are the same, not as clear pattern, but is occurring again with nitrates as nitrogen, a little higher seen at the big trees than at the city of water at Santa Cruz intake. But nevertheless, concerns that we have for both nitrates and fecal coliform from the San Lorenzo, in the San Lorenzo river. Now switching to a little bit of our nitrate concern areas in the groundwater basin. This is, and in the surface water as well, these are the areas that are indicated and we'll be talking a bit about more about this as we indicate that these, if an odd system is in these areas, there's particular attention that is now being required under the new ordinance for these particular areas. They not only oftentimes have nitrate concern areas, but they also have fast perking soils, which also require additional oversight and control before the sewage is discharged to the soil. Nitrating groundwater is a concern. It's less of a current concern, but only a 4% contributing factor to how much nitrates we see in the Pajaro Basin groundwater system, groundwater area. It's only 4%. Again, we were talking about fertilizer being a much more important contributor. In the Santa Margarita, we see that we know that the Santa Margarita basin contributes to the base flow. In other words, there's parts where the groundwater actually goes into the feeds, into the surface water of the river. And we know that as I just showed you, the San Lorenzo River is a concern from elevated nitrate. Further, San Lorenzo Valley Water District's North District have had to take out several wells in the Quail Hollow area because of nitrates in the, that were exceeding that they had to take them out and no longer are using those particular wells. The Mid County Basin, again, localized impact so far from odds, they did have to take a, the Soquel Water District did have to take a well out of service because of exceedances of nitrates in the La Selva Beach area. So for all these reasons, and obviously the state oversight, it is important to us to look at our odds policy and decide what improvements to it and also how do we need the state minimum requirements. So these next two slides are just a summary of those that there's a lot more technical detail that is in the ordinance and also in the documents that we shared with you. I'm just gonna highlight a few of them. These, the ones that I've bulleted here are the ones that are already being implemented and that's because they were really essentially ones we had to do because they were in the state minimum standards. And therefore when the Board approved them on October 14th, they expected us to start implementing and we actually told us to start implementing them. So some of our groundwater separation and what that refers to is the distance between the bottom of the trench of the leach field and where the groundwater, high groundwater level marks are. The soil is where the pathogens are broken down. And so we need that soil. So we want some more soil separation between, well, we want some more separation between the bottom of the trench and the groundwater. So instead of going from one to three feet, now it's five to eight feet unless there's enhanced treatment. If you're not familiar with enhanced treatment, this is just a step whereby people, rather than discharging the sewage directly from the septic tank to the leach field, it's actually treated to reduce. It can be for different things. Certainly can expectation in many cases to reduce the nitrogen, but also to reduce the pathogen level as well before it's discharged to the leach field. We will require that all new and replacement systems be fast-perking soils in the nitrate concern areas are again referring you back to that map that I show you, will require enhanced treatment for nitrogen and removal. Enhanced treatment will also be required for replacement of all seepage pits and for major remodels of homes with seepage pits. That's what we call an upgrade. The maximum trench depth will decrease. We only used to allow it up to 10 feet and now it'll be four feet unless enhanced treatment is used. This will affect parcels with clay soils or other constraints that limit dispersal area. And the repairs of failing systems may be allowed to be used trenches up to 10 feet in depth if they have site constraints. And system repairs will no longer be allowed to be designed by a contractor, but we will need to have them designed by a qualified professional. And a qualified professional must conduct the soil and percolation testing. Oops. These next set of bullets are the key changes to our ordinance that we are not implementing until the ordinance is adopted by the board and also the coastal commission. These are, we are changing, we're getting rid of some of our site specific assessment and mitigation areas, site constraint areas. John, we'll talk a little bit more about that in the general plan amendments because we know we have other abilities to deal with these issues in the ordinance. We will require for all enhanced treatment systems to maintain a service contact, service contract with a qualified service provider. I will say in the past, the county in some cases took on that role, but now we will be requiring that they have a commercial qualified service provider to do that yearly review of their enhanced treatment system to make sure it's working. We will be developing a local registration and conditional approval of qualified service providers as per the ordinance. And we will be implementing a mandatory OTS evaluation at the time of property transfer. This will include a system conditions, permitted status, performance, and identification of likely requirements for future upgrades. Consider this kind of an akin to, if you're living in a more urban area, many of the sewer districts will require that you do a sewer line inspection and upgrades if need be at the time of transfer property real estate transfer. So we're, this is really a similar process that we're planning to require. So with that, I'm gonna switch over to John who is, I think, allowed to speak. So he's gonna talk about the general plan amendments. Good morning, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, let's go ahead and advance the slide. The general plan does include a number of policies and programs related to onsite disposal. So as we're updating our ordinance, we also need to update the general plan. Ordinance chapter 7.38 is also a local coastal program implementing ordinance. So as we make changes to that code, it has to go through the full process of review by the planning commission, the board, and then on to the coastal commission. So we're proposing amendments to both policies of both chapter five, the open space conservation and open space chapter, and then chapter seven, the parks recreation and public facilities chapter of the general plan. These are for consistency with the lamp and updates to chapter 7.38, as well as some cleanup relative to the sustainability update. As a part of the sustainability update, we did identify some areas where cleanup was needed and we have worked with the planning staff to update those sections. All of the proposals relative to the sustainability update that also relate to odds are included in this package, just so you can see everything all together. And in the end, when the sustainability update is adopted, we'll be folding all this information together into the updated general plan document. So specifically in policy 5.5.15 and 5.5.16, that references the old constrained areas. These were actually developed back in the 1980s and hate to say it, but I was actually around when those were developed. That mapping is not particularly accurate. And we're phasing out the limitation, the lot size limitation for constrained areas and any reference to those old constrained areas. Essentially, we're gonna have adequate protection as Marilyn discussed through site specific requirements, particularly enhanced treatment where we have the fast percolation soils and recharge areas. And we still will be maintaining the one acre minimum in the water supply watershed areas. Policies 5.5.17 and 7.21.3 were dealt with specifics regarding slopes and easements. And we just determined that those were overly specific, too specific for the general plan. Those provisions are in chapter 7.38. So we're not losing those provisions, we're just pulling them out of the general plan. And that again was part of the sustainability update to try to not get into too many specifics in the general plan. 5.5.18 and 5.5.19 are relatively recent policy updates that were put in. And they essentially do the same thing, although one is within the coastal zone one is without the coastals outside the coastal zone. And those are going to be combined into just one policy regarding the use of easements for sewage disposal for public facilities throughout the county. These were essentially put into the general plan back when the Felton library was developed. And the Felton library site could not accommodate a septic system that met standards on that property. So they needed to use an easement off the property. We do not allow easements still for individual residential or private developments. Again, just for public public facilities. 5.7.2, we're updating the language regarding upgrade of systems within 100 feet of a waterway. New development will still have to stay over 100 feet from a waterway, but if a existing development already has an odds within 100 feet of the waterway, they could add bedrooms if they upgrade the system using enhanced treatment. So we're cleaning that language up to be consistent with the code and with the lamp and with practice that has gone on to date. And then in policy 7.21.4, we're essentially removing the term alternative system and replacing it with enhanced treatment systems. These sort of advanced technologies have been around for many years now. We have over 600 of them in our county. So they're really no longer alternative. They're completely acceptable and they're enhanced treatment systems that give a higher level of effluent quality prior to disposal of effluent to the soil. We expect that with a lot of these changes we'll be seeing an increased use of enhanced treatment systems because many of our properties just cannot meet current standards for conventional septic systems, conventional disposal. So we will be seeing more use of enhanced treatment systems. I will say that we have completed environmental review on this package. The environmental coordinator determined that it was exempt from further environmental review because it is providing for increased protection in the environment. We also have sent letters out to all of the tribal organizations giving them an opportunity to comment on this package of amendments. We did not receive any response from the tribes. We have reached out to Coastal Commission staff. They're aware of what's being proposed but so far we have not gotten any feedback from Coastal Commission staff. So I'll go ahead and turn it back to Maryland to wrap it up and I'll be available to answer any questions going forward. Thanks John and I failed to actually adequately recommend or introduce John. Many of you know him I'm assuming for many, many years of being such a critical role to the county as far as water quality, water resources issues. And we've had the pleasure of working with John, John retired. I think it was fall of December of like 2019 maybe. Maybe it was 20, I can't remember because he's continued to work with us in a consulting role and we do appreciate him and he did essentially write the lamp and help leave the effort and the rewriting the ordinance. So if the technical issues come up he's definitely the person. With that I want to just to say I'm gonna recommend that the planning commission take the following action, conduct a public hearing to review the proposed amendments to the sewage amendment to Santa Cruz County General Plan, local coastal plan chapters five and seven and Santa Cruz County code 7.38 bring county provisions into conformance with the state policy and the county's local agency management program for on-site wastewater treatment systems as approved by the state. The central coast regional water quality control board with the associated sequel and notice of exemption and adopt the attached resolution recommending that the board of supervisors adopt the ordinance modifying county code chapter 7.38 sewage disposal to conform with the state policy for on-site wastewater treatment systems and the Santa Cruz local agency management program and that you approve the proposed amendments that they approve the proposed amendments to chapter five and seven of the general plan local coastal plan attachment D2 and direct staff to file the California environmental quality act notice of exemption, exhibit E with the clerk of the board and direct staff to transmit the amendments to the California coastal commission. With that we will take questions if there are any. Thank you. Thank you, Marilyn for an excellent presentation and thank you, John. Good to see you again. Glad to know your expertise has been put to good use by the county. So are there any questions of commissioners to staff at this time? And I had it just a couple of small things on the ordinance if that's okay. So I had just a couple of first, I mean, let me just say my great appreciation. I know that getting the lamp approved and then now doing revisions with the odds has been a significant amount of work, as you said, over a number of years. And so I just really wanna state my appreciation both to Ms. Underwood and to Mr. Ricker. I know it's just been a heavy lift. I just had a couple, I had a couple comments and then one kind of more question. A small thing that I'd like to see kind of revised or changed before it goes to the board for approval is that throughout the changes, there's reference to MPI without actually defining it. In the previous ordinance before it was struck, there's actually a definition of MPI. I know that in it you also reference minutes per inch so I know what it meant. But when we're having these types of ordinance, it's really important that we are clear when we have these acronyms that we define them. So I would appreciate that before it goes to the board that the MPI be clearly defined and then we don't just use the ordinance throughout. But that's just a small thing that I think things cleaning up. Another thing that I just think for that same vein of transparency in defining nitrate concern areas, letter V in the definition, I just had a question about the way it's gonna work in transparency though, the definition goes on to say that these are these areas where effluent discharge from odds in fast percolating soils. And then it goes on to say, including the San Lorenzo River watershed, the North Coast water supply watersheds, Glensea Creek watersheds, and Los Alamos Beach area as shown on a map of nitrate concern areas maintained by the director of environmental health division. And I just have a question I guess about that because although the San Lorenzo River watershed is defined in the ordinance, those other areas are not. And so I just have a question about how this map will be available to the public because we have an ordinance that it's referencing a map that is not included in the ordinance, or does it say where that map will be available? And so for the public or for professionals who are using this ordinance in order to build these facilities, I just wanna know if you could answer kind of how that map will be available for reference and to the public. So if you don't mind just kind of answering that question, that would be helpful for me. Okay, I'm probably gonna let John talk this, but I believe it's available already on our GIS website. So it's a layer that people can add, the interested folks can add. Is that not correct, John? That is correct, it is on the county's GIS website. That language in terms of maps maintained by the director is, that's language that's been in the ordinance for many years that predate any kind of GIS website. So it used to be, I guess, somebody could come to the counter and ask to see the map or we would have it posted at the counter. But now we really try to make all this information available electronically and all of our consultants and designers and qualified professionals are very familiar with that. And it is available to the public, those that can navigate the county's GIS system. Why not just say in a parenthesis available at Berlin? I guess I would wanna consult the county council and planning staff to see what the current convention is. But that might make sense to do that. I mean, one of the issues is we may identify additional nitrate concern areas as information, new information became available, although I think we've got a pretty good handle on it at this point, but we can check into that on what the best way to reference that information would be. Well, clearly the reference that is at the behest of the director is pretty archaic and most people will expect some electronic. It can be very general, but tell people where to go to find out. I think, however, it's manifested. Yeah, one of the problems is those links get revised, you know, frequently as the websites are updated. So I would say thank you for the comment. I think we can definitely think about is there a way to phrase it differently without providing link and all honesty because you want an ordinance not to have to be salient because the link goes bad, but I think it's a point well taken that is that statement imply that you can find the map electronically? I think it doesn't preclude that, but I'm certainly happy to look into that and see if we can phrase it a different way. Thank you, and I appreciate hearing that it's kind of standard language. I just, so that's good to know. It's just something to consider. So I appreciate both your comments, both the fact that it's standard as well as perhaps there's... So we have to consider updating the standard. I don't know that solution if I agree. I agree we don't want a link to be something that could be outdated, but I'm sorry, I just thank you for taking my comment into consideration. I just had one additional kind of question, and this is probably my biggest question, is that when I was reading the ordinance 7.38.080C, it had to do with calamity. And I just, I was hoping maybe you could speak, I know we're going in this direction of obviously updated odds. And, but the question really that I was left with because it's this part of the code is kind of self-referential. So it references later part of the code, you read that part of the code and references back. And so I was hoping maybe you could clarify for me under what circumstances post calamity would someone not be required to replace their odds. So, okay, not be required to play. You know, it was too negative. So there is an earthquake, there is a fire, a tree strikes a home. So calamity occurs under what, and under what reconstruction circumstance would someone not be required to replace their odds? Because for me, when I was reading the code and I read a lot of code and I still was not clear in reading the code under what circumstances someone would not be required to replace their odds. Is it if the odd was only installed a couple years ago? Is it based on if they're doing like for like reconstruction and I'm just wondering if you could provide kind of a layman's turns answer to that if it's even possible. So like for, so just say it's actually we have a real world example, obviously this plot these part of this ordinance did not change that much. In fact, I'm not even sure it changed at all from the current ordinance. So the CZU is an appropriate thing to talk about here. So the concept here in a way is these if people are building like for like and they can demonstrate that they didn't have they had a permitted non-failing or predates permit the burning time and their septic system was not failing then essentially it's not the septic system that they're just trying to rebuild like for like, right? So that's one issue and then they can do that without needing to do anything to their septic system. If they in fact have a failing septic system that we have some records that there was maybe a failing septic system that unfortunately coincided with the time of the CZU burn they would have to address that as a repair. And in that case again repair standards apply which are not which are more lenient than if you were upgrading again if you're building like for like and you just needed to repair they're still a lot more lenient in the current in the new law code that we're proposing than if you were doing an upgrade or upgrade. So in the CZU the other thing they're not never gonna be new development because new development would apply but if they wanted to do an upgrade so they have, you know, they had a three bedroom system the septic system was built for a three bedroom and they wanna now build a four bedroom that's considered an upgrade. Now we would be looking at current standards and saying okay, do you have adequate setback for the streams? Do you have adequate setback from your well and your neighbor's wells? Those are the kind of things we would start looking at and applying in that situation where they wanted to upgrade. But otherwise like for like is you had a three bedroom you wanna put back a three bedroom. The one thing we would look at is to make sure that you're meeting stream setbacks and some of those other important groundwater separation setbacks and you might have to do something additional but for the most part those are the only restrictions. We wouldn't restrict you based on lot size. We wouldn't restrict you from rebuilding as long as you can demonstrate that you meet current standards and the same in the sense of stream setback and groundwater separation. Does that help? It does, can you just clarify for me if they were like for like as long as the system wasn't failing, it's okay but if they were upgrading then they have because I'm not simply asking at CZU I'm asking countywide that's part of our responsibility and I'm thinking throughout our county especially in the area that I'm kind of represent we have like high water tables and high per crates. And so I just wanna be clear that you're talking only if they're upgrading with it then being required to meet current standards of water separation and stream setbacks and things like that. And did I understand you correctly? I misspoke actually. So the first thing we could look to see if is it a failing system? Is there any information that would suggest it's a failing system? The second is even if it's like for like they do need in need stream setback and groundwater separation. And again, that is some not just us but the state odds policy as well. Thank you for clarifying. I appreciate it. Do any other commissioners have questions for staff at this point? Yes. Commissioner Shepard, do you have some questions for staff? Yes, just unmuting myself. First of all, it's a pleasure to hear Mr. Richter again. It's always a pleasure to see or hear from him again. I'm really glad he's still consulting on Maryland. This was a great report. It read very well. I did have one. This isn't direct to just this report or staff reports but people who are used to the county know all the acronyms. I'd like to suggest that some of these ordinance changes maybe have a cover sheet where you list what the acronym is and then once then you can always refer to it. I know I always have to go back and see what does VOIC or LAP whatever mean and then I have to memorize it. So because it's never referred to again. You only say it in the first or second page and then in next hundred pages it's never repeated. I just think a definitions page wouldn't hurt because I would myself tear it out and set it beside me. In this case, there's only one but in many cases, especially with these other planning documents there's lots and I don't remember what they mean. So that was just a suggestion. My question is, could you go over because I think it'd be good to know it because I get a lot of questions about it both ADUs and probably is going to be relevant for tiny houses. Am I correct in thinking that if you want to add an ADU your septic system will need to accommodate the extra use by the code standards or can you just speak to that specific issue? And I know it's too early to talk about tiny homes but this is going to be a big question. Sure. So yeah, so any upgrades, whether it be adding to bedrooms to the main house or adding an ADU or adding a tiny home, all of those would be required first to look at the adequacy of the septic system. We don't require, at this point, we were requiring a septic tank for both the primary home as well as the ADU or tiny home and then they could use the same leach field if the leach field was adequately sized. If it's not adequately sized they can either upgrade the leach field to meet that or create a second entirely separate system for the ADU that would treat the ADU's sewage effluent. This is not necessarily true if enhanced treatment is needed then they can probably get away with not having a separate septic tank but otherwise, yes, the whole point would be is all of us want, still it doesn't matter if you're in an ADU or in a primary you would want the sewage to be adequately treated so that you can protect the environment also your water well as well. So you do have to upgrade to meet standards. That's clear and may I suggest you might include that because people are going to be looking for it and I did find it kind of, but it took me a while and I just think that's a question people are gonna wanna go in and say what will I need to do about septic if I'm adding an ADU, why not just call it out? Yeah, it is described but you're saying in the ordinance or in the staff report I'm not sure. In the ordinance maybe make a call out as how for ADU's at least right now let's just say the use because people are going to be looking for it and call it why not make it easy. Yes, okay. And just so you know, in addition to this we also put out information on our website specifically addressing ADUs and so that's also in addition, we will be doing that as well in addition to the ordinance. Yeah, I think you do a great job on that informational side. I just think we ought to include this because we have expanded that availability so much. Gotcha, thank you. Any other questions for staff? The commissioners? Okay, well let's open up the public hearing then. Lizanne, are there members of the public who wish to address the commission on this? Oops, you're muted, Lizanne. There we go. I am not seeing any hands raised. My goodness, that's hard to believe. This is such an important issue. Well, you know, we do hear about, it's fascinating because this is one of these you know, county wide policy issues that when we're changing the policy, nobody's here but when it gets implemented. Yeah, sure, we hear from folks. Okay, so well if there's no hands raised we'll close the public hearing and bring it back to the commission. I just wanna say that that was an excellent presentation. You know, as Commissioner Villalanti was bringing up some of the issues that you know, our district is experiencing with the CZU fire. So you know, when this does, when the rubber hits the road it's an incredibly important issue. And of course it protects our drinking water because as you pointed out, most of our drinking water is surfaced on groundwater which is affected by ox and thank you for updating us on the most current terms that we should be now be using. So I will incorporate that into my vocabulary. So I just wanna thank you for the presentation. That was excellent and I'll wait to hear from my commissioners to see what action they wanna take. Okay, well, I wanna echo what Commissioner Chardin has said. This was an excellent report. I'm going to keep it so I can refer to it again. So thank you for all the work that went into it. Let's see, what do we have to do about this? Approve the staff recommendation. Okay, I would like to make a motion to approve the staff report. And I think Commissioner Villalanti had one additional suggestion to incorporate into a motion about, I don't know if she wants to articulate that. Just made the recommendation that they include defining the acronym before it goes back to the before it gets taken to the board of supervisors of MPI and how they wanna do that in the ordinance is their decision but it's important that it be defined at some point because it's used throughout the report. So would you like to incorporate that into your motion, Commissioner Shepard? Yes, I think that's important. And also, may I incorporate my suggestion that they specifically address ADUs? It's not changing anything, it's just making a subtitle. So it'll be easily findable. And then if the other commissioners don't have any objections, let's just have a definite, an acronym pager with the appropriate title for such a page where it's got an acronym and then what it means included with the staff report. I think that's helpful to anybody reading this. Great, so that's a motion. Is there a second? I'll second that. Excellent. So is the motion in the second? Is there any further discussion? Okay, seeing none. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Excellent motion carries with four and none opposed. Thank you very much. Thank you. Senator Wood and Mr. Ricker. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of your day. And now we will move on to our final item. We're not our final item, but our final substantive item, item 10, which is the study session on the sustainability update. And I believe we're starting with Netisha. And Netisha, please unmute yourself. Yes, thank you, Lizanne. And on our use, we'll be sharing the presentation. So I'll give her a second to share before we start. Okay. Okay, so it looks like, can everyone see the presentation? We can. Yes. Thank you. Good afternoon, commissioners. Today we'll be discussing the sustainability policy and regulatory update. My name is Netisha Williams, senior planner in the community development and infrastructure department or CDI. And Ani Shank, a transportation planner who's also involved in this project will be presenting with me this morning or this afternoon now. So the presentation is the third of a series of study sessions with the planning commission on the sustainability update project. Today we'll focus on the access and mobility element of the general plan, the parks, recreation and public facilities element, as well as related county code amendments. So here's today's agenda for the study session. We'll touch on major topics that are addressed in the new access and mobility element, including a review of the transportation framework, transportation system management and parking. Then we'll highlight major changes to the code and new code sections, including updates to parking requirements. And next we'll review the Portola Drive streetscapes concepts as well as coastal access and placemaking. And after this, we'll have an opportunity for questions and a focus discussion on transportation policy if the commission likes before moving on to the next section, which will be an overview of the key changes to the parks, recreation and public facilities element. And then at the end of the presentation we'll have additional opportunity for discussion and to answer any questions. So now I will pass the presentation off to Ani Shank to discuss transportation changes. Thanks, Matisha. So I'm gonna apologize, my allergies have been really bad. I might have a bit of a gravelly voice or have to sneeze in the middle of my presentation. So I'm gonna start off just by talking a little bit about the framework for the access and mobility element. There's a summary on the screen here of the general areas that are touched on in the general plan. One thing you'll note is that we no longer call it the circulation element. It's now called the access and mobility element. Similar thing with the land use element, which is now the built environment element. So the four major areas in the access and mobility element are transportation system management, multimodal planning. There's a huge emphasis on integrating the various modes rather than keeping them separate as it was in the last general plan. And then place making in general, also I kind of think of coastal access as part of our place making strategies, environmental justice, economic vitality and innovation. And then as Natisha mentioned, we're also going to talk a little bit about the county code regulation changes, which is part of the code modernization part of the sustainability update. The code for transportation, namely parking circulation and access was all over the code previously. So these are the three main areas where they were. There were actually other areas as well, but the three main chapters are listed here. And then thirdly, we had the design guidelines that were created as a whole new set of guidelines that list out street standards. Their guidelines have been not regulatory, but they do provide a really nice set of relationships between the functional form of buildings and the streetscape. So I think they'll be helpful to applicants. So just to go into a little bit more detail with the transportation framework, the layer network approach is sort of the basis for all of our transportation planning and the access and mobility element. This is a concept that we actually developed or the county developed in the Sustainable Santa Cruz County plan. And it came about because they really wanted to have a complete streets approach. Complete streets planning takes the philosophy that all users should have equal access and be prioritized on our roadway so that there is no preference to just vehicles. However, in a network where we have very constrained right of ways, we can't provide the ideal sidewalk widths or bicycle lane widths to users as we would like. So instead, a layered network approach was conceived and what this does is it prioritizes certain user types on specific streets. So the end result is a network for let's say active transportation, another network for transit and so on and so on. So that each user type has a comprehensive network that's layered on top of each other. And then that allows us to build out a better set of facilities for those user types without compromising space. Another key component of the transportation framework is that there's a lot more coordination between the built environment element, previously called land use element, and the access and mobility element. So there's concepts such as 15 minute neighborhoods in the built environment element that were directly influenced by this layered network approach and key destinations. And then finally, there are new roadways that are called out in the access and mobility element maps or map, I should say. And this is really to help try to reduce the distance people have to walk or bike. They're mostly local roadways and in a very select few places. So I mentioned the layered network approach. I just wanted to give you an example of the four of the main types of roadways. Typologies, is there often called? There are a few other types that are not called out right here. And these are all listed out in the general plan. The multimodal corridor type is a typology that really prioritizes longer distance travel. So these tend to be wider roadways where we can provide better facilities for transit and protected facilities for bicyclists. An example of this is Capitola Road. So Cal would also be another example that you could easily conjure up in your mind. And then the next one that is pretty common in the county that you'll see a lot of in the map. And this is signified by the orange lines in that figure this last slide is the active connector. The active connector really prioritizes bicyclists and pedestrians. So wider facilities for those two user types. Brommer is a good example of an active connector. And then we also have some main streets. And so these are really for walkability. So we prioritize much wider sidewalks. So pedestrian oriented streets, pedestrian scaled amenities, transit access to those goods and facilities. And then we have the local residential streets which would be smaller scale residential communities where bicyclists would share the lanes with vehicles. You have a base level sidewalk width but these are lower speed commerce streets and those are signified by gray lines on the maps. So now I'm gonna talk a little bit about transportation system management which is a really broad term that covers a lot of topics. So I will try to keep this short. The major metric that has been used in the past to measure the performance of our system and performance of the system is one of the major components of system management. So the primary metric that was used in the past is called level of service or LOS. That's a metric that I'm sure you have heard a lot about in past applicant or project level review. Level of service grades the operations of a roadway on a scale of A to F. You'll see that grading system on this slide here based on how much delay a vehicle experiences. And the problem with this system as was realized about 15 to 20 years ago is that it really emphasizes the vehicle user experience and while it does get at greenhouse gas emissions vis-a-vis idling, it doesn't really address greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector based on how far people are driving and the proposed approach to reduce or to make level of service better to improve the operations of a roadway network was to grow capacity because when you grow capacity, then there's less delay. However, there's this phenomenon that when you grow capacity, more people will then use that roadway. So we were getting caught in this cycle of growing capacity to improve our level of service and get it back to grade of A and then it would go back down to lower grades of D to F because more people would use the roadway system. This is a phenomenon called induced demand. So increasing capacity was not working and it was actually resulting in increased greenhouse gas emissions. This is something that is being addressed at the statewide level vis-a-vis legislation. And so what happened with this legislation was that we took level of service out of the options for and any kind of measure of delay out of the options for looking at impacts, environmental impacts and transportation and it was replaced with vehicle miles traveled which looks at the distance that people travel. So now instead of measuring the performance of our system using level of service, we look at VMT. Now this is true mainly for CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act purposes. So when we're looking at a project for its environmental impacts, we still use level of service as an operational component for looking at a project. However, in the proposed general plan, access mobility element, we have proposed to reduce the level of service threshold to D and there are some nuances to that. But there is a almost a page of information about that in the general plan access mobility element. So that's a lot of information but it's the short end of that is to say that we are moving to a much greater focus on VMT and this is true not just at the County of Santa Cruz but statewide. So there you'll see that woven throughout the access mobility element. Can I just ask you a quick question there? Sure. I want you to go, don't wanna interrupt your flow but I'd like when we get to the end to see a specific example of what that means. I read this carefully and I saw that you kind of generally said but that's something people, whenever there's something proposed people are ought to talk a lot about traffic. I understand that the level of service was not functioning at all but can you give me an example of how you would evaluate something later on with the new system? A specific, very focused example. I understood the level of service even though it did work but this is more complex and I'd like to see how you would apply but I don't wanna interrupt you now but I'm saying that that's one I did not quite understand because it was on the stand. Yeah, let me talk about that at the end. It is, it actually is complex. But somebody's gotta, we need to understand it. Definitely. Otherwise you're only the, I'm gonna be the only people who do understand it which will not work very well. Right, and we actually have talked about having a whole study session dedicated just to this topic because it is complex. So there are actually, there's a number of things that affect how far people drive, VMT. And one of those things is transportation demand management which is often used as a mitigation measure when, and this actually kind of does get at your question. So it's often used as a mitigation measure when people exceed the thresholds that the county has set for VMT. However, transportation demand management is also a kind of a conceptual philosophy or approach that's woven throughout the entire code and general plan. So while there are a couple of specific policies that outright say the county will support and implement TDM programs, there are a number of ways that we are supporting TDM or transportation demand management throughout these updates. So for example, then let me just go step back for a second and define transportation demand management. It used to be used as a term that just meant to simply use the system, the transportation system more efficiently to manage choices and demand such that you were putting less demand on the system. Now we use the term so that we, to mean that we're actually reducing demand with the intended goal of reducing the amount that people have to travel by vehicle and single occupant vehicle, I should say. So we try to increase choices for car polling, transit, bicycling, walking, et cetera. So the way that we've done that throughout the general plan includes things by includes things like long-term parking demand strategies in the code includes items such as increased exceptions for parking. We've also, you'll see like even something like having designed guidelines where we are trying to create a more walkable environment actually encourages people to walk rather than drive a couple of miles. So these are some of the ways that TDM is philosophically woven throughout the general plan updates. The other element of transportation system management that's in the access mobility element is an inclusion of vision zero and safety. Vision zero is something you'll start hearing more and more about as the state starts to support it and even tie funding to having a vision zero action plan. Vision zero is a philosophy that fatalities and injuries due to vehicle collisions are preventable and that we should strive to reduce those to nothing. So that is something you'll start hearing more languaging around. It's interdisciplinary and interdepartmental so it requires a lot of effort to get off the ground but there are local examples specifically in Watsonville. So now I just wanna spend a little bit of time on parking and I'll try to speed up my pace here. So the policies that we have in relationship to parking are kind of in two categories. There's policies that are implemented through the proposed code and then there's a couple of policies that are long term that we do not have implemented through the proposed code. So the first four address items that are implemented in the current code proposal. So we really did try to change the parking ratios to right size them for the land uses. Our parking ratios were pretty off as compared to other jurisdictions or industry standards. We also actually already allowed for shared parking in our current code, although that was a little known fact because it was buried in the code. So we just put that consolidated that with the parking ratios but that is a common parking strategy which allows for a reduction of the use of land and more efficient use of land. We have a policy related to increasing access to publicly owned parking lots. We also have a policy related to conducting parking, quantitative parking studies so that we can understand our parking demand and supply better, which would then allow us to implement the longer-term goals which are programs that manage parking demand vis-a-vis paid parking, parking districts or moving parking pricing up and down based on occupancy. Those are all very long-term goals for which we need more data and actually more support of alternative modes of transportation. So then this slide slightly blocked by my Zoom window here. This slide shows some of the ratios that have changed. We tried to really simplify it here. So obviously we had some changes to residential parking requirements. We went from having two space minimum for the single family home to one space minimum and then increasing from there. This is more in line with what we're seeing around the state and also with more and more state legislation that's getting passed. We also added a category for townhouses being this is tied to some of the code and that relates to land use because that's a term or a category that wasn't found previously and was confusing people. We retained requirements for guest parking. That was a comment that came up or has come up for people is that they're really concerned about maintaining guest parking. So that is maintained in both townhouses and multi-family and that's from the existing code. The change regarding multi-family is that instead of having spaces tied to number of bedrooms, we're tying them to the size of the unit. And this is a recommendation that came to us to really try to encourage or allow for affordable by design type units where we can encourage smaller units for people who may not need as much space or be able to afford as much space. And this reduces the amount of land a developer needs for small units. And then this has a number of other retail commercial service type categories. And this is by no means an exhaustive table. But in some of these categories, we didn't reduce parking across the board actually in some categories we increased parking or slightly tweaked it to really address the use specific to it. In other cases, we consolidated various uses that had similar parking requirements but didn't actually change the parking requirements. So this list tries to just present those that were that there was some kind of change to the parking requirement. So as an example, public assembly, really standard parking requirement is you have one space for three seats or for each three persons of design occupancy we also had an outdated parking set of parking requirements for nursing homes or assisted living facilities. Oh, and another thing we did is we updated the terminology a little bit. We had some antiquated terms for things like assisted living facilities. I can't remember exactly what term it was in there. Can I interrupt you just here? Cause I think that this is actually a question that I had and maybe it's because I'm lazy about doing math, but can you go through each one of these and just, it looks to me that you're reducing parking requirements for everything in this grid here. Can you just go through each one and say this is a reduction, this is an increase so that it's clear for us and the public what is actually going on because it's hard to just calculate on the fly what the change- Sure, so for public assembly, it's hard to say this is probably- That one looked like a reduction. It's- Cause that's per seat. But I just told me as a public assembly are we increasing parking requirements or reducing parking? It's actually, I mean, it's for- If you can't explain it to me then, right? We need to be able to say to the public for public assembly, we're going to be increasing parking requirements or we're going to be decreasing parking requirements by X. Does that make sense for future meetings? I agree because it seems all I could think was, well, one space for each three seats means you think that three people are gonna, two of three people will take public transportation to get to a public assembly, right? Right, so previously- That means you think people are gonna do that at night and when it rains, et cetera, et cetera. So previously, if it was 0.25 spaces per seat for three seats, that would be 0.75 spaces. Now we have one space for three seats. So it's an increase? Yes. So you're gonna add parking for new public assembly? That's all what I'm asking. So going down the list, nursing homes and assisted living facilities is also an increase. Hospitals is a probably an increase because it's based on employees instead of office space. So the number of spaces per bed is a decrease, but we're also changing the number of parking requirements to be tied to employees versus office space. So we looked at a couple of examples of recently passed or proposed, expansions and this would have resulted in an increase. Let's see, for retail, commercial services, et cetera, this is actually the same except for the second area. So there is, this used to be two categories. Retail, commercial services, shopping centers, convenience stores, supermarkets, et cetera. And the second category was supermarkets and convenience stores, which had a one per 200 square foot. So that has now been combined and the new requirement for all of these categories is one per 300 gross square feet. So that means that the supermarkets and convenience stores will now have a increased requirement. Whoops, sorry, didn't mean to go back to the next slide. I said that as a decrease. Sorry, sorry, I meant for the, yes, that is a decrease. I was kind of looking ahead to the next one here. And then we, for another change here actually is that cafes with 12 seats or less were split up with, split up from cafes or coffee shops with 13 or more seats. So the idea is there is that cafes with high turnover, which tend to have fewer seats would have a lower parking requirement than coffee shops, which have a lower turnover or cafes, restaurants, bars, et cetera, which have a lower turnover where people stay longer. Yeah, I think we get that part. So they have a higher parking requirement at one per 100 square feet. Okay, but so the change for restaurants and bars though is that increasing the parking requirement from what restaurants used to have or lowering it? So we are increasing the parking requirement for coffee shops or cafes with 13 or more seats. We are not increasing the parking requirement for dining in restaurants. Sorry, Anais, can you explain that to me? Because I see it as the opposite. So I see it as dining in restaurants used to have one per 100 square feet plus 0.3 per employee versus we've gotten rid of the additional 0.3, so I would do that as a decrease in parking. Right, so we are not increasing the parking requirements for restaurants. But this is extremely important though because this comes up quite a bit at the Planning Commission, especially with restaurants because parking is always an issue. So I just want to be very clear for the Commission and for the public what the change is being proposed to be. And so that is a reduction for parking for restaurants as the proposal. Correct, so for restaurants and any kind of cafe with 13 or more, the requirement is one per 100 because restaurants used to have an additional requirement for parking for employees. This is a reduction. Okay, so in the future, when this comes back to us in the future, I would want this to be spelled out in a way that's clear because it seems like it wasn't clear to any of the commissioners up here who are pretty experienced. So it's probably not clear to the public as well. I would agree. Could you just explain your rationale for getting rid of employee parking requirements because any cafe of any size is three or four people there who work there? Why not specify parking for them? It's to simplify the parking requirements not to tie it to the user. Most parking requirements are not tied for these types of uses are not tied to a specific user but just simplified at a rate per square foot. So it's one per 100 or one per 200 or one per 300. If there's a desire to talk about the rate, I would recommend doing that rather than tying it to over complicating it by tying it to a rate plus number of employees, which is a variable that changes all the time. So I'm gonna make a suggestion for us right now. Since this is a study session, we're trying to study the material. And then in August, we're gonna have the opportunity to actually take action, make any changes to the recommendation that we see fit. So right now, I just wanna make sure that the commission and the public actually understands the material in front of us. And so that's why I asked such specific questions about this, cause it wasn't clear to me in the packet. And so then in the future, when this is revised or well, yeah, revised for when we see this again, if this could be spelled out much more clearly, that would be very helpful. I would agree with Ms. Dan, because although I am a numbers geek and I would just say that I would appreciate staff spending some time being able to articulate this. I feel like I agree with Ms. Dan that even staff struggled to answer some of these questions and it would be good that when they come back that they were able to say, not only in a column, maybe saying increased degrees, but also being able to speak to it in kind of an articulate way. When we discuss it later, I agree with Ms. Dan that this is a study session and it would be good to continue on with our material so that we can study it and have these questions answered and then have discussion in the future. But I would just encourage them to not only bring back the material, but also bring back, spend some time so they can speak to it in the future in kind of a very articulate succinct way because it sounds like there's, we wanna ensure that there's not confusion. Well, I agree with what you both just said, but I am prepared to hear the staff report and then make some suggestions and some of the things I think don't really make sense to me given my careful reading of the input and I don't wanna wait till August if I have specific suggestions of things that aren't clear. That's all. No, no, I wasn't meaning to suggest that. It was just more of to make sure that we at least have the understand the information so that we can then, you know, I mean, I couldn't have made any suggestions on this because I didn't understand it. That's all. But there are the other parts that, yeah, I have general comments as well. Okay, so thank you, Anais, for letting us clarify that with you and yes, please proceed. Can I add something as well as I'm a little, I have a question that's, I noticed that as you get closer to the ocean, things get tighter and more difficult, but as you, you know, get on the other side of Soquel, drive, you know, things lighten up because you don't have the tourist industry bombardment. And I'm just wondering, does all of this make a difference in where it's located if it's along certain corridors or is it just a random, has anything ever been designated in different sections of our community? Because it doesn't, it doesn't look that way. It just- I'm not sure I understand the question. Do you mean is, have there been specific, like different parking requirements implemented based on the location? Yeah, I mean, if you go along Porter, Porter Street, yeah, I mean, how far is she? Portola. What am I thinking? I think that- Yeah, Portola, if you go down Portola and you get in the Pleasure Point area, I mean, you just can't find parking along a lot of the areas. And then you get further to Soquel Drive and you can. And so our community is based on this tourist industry and density issues. So I have a hard time understanding how, like if you go down Warf Road, it's in Capitola. So it wouldn't make any difference. But if you go down one area and you see that a convalescent type home, there's just no parking anywhere in Pleasure Point. And then you get a little further away in there is. So it's probably a really difficult thing to designate any type of parking per square footage in our community. If it's, I mean, you have to apply this general standard, but in our community, things are really affected by relationship to the ocean and geography. Yeah, I mean, I can't speak to the historical application of parking standards, but certainly there is greater demand in certain areas of the county. And that's where some of the policies could really be helpful for long-term parking management strategies, such as parking districts, shared parking, even having some county managed parking lots. So, that's something that encouraged the county to think about in the long-term. And then just to speak to some of the comments earlier, we do have a much more involved table that shows all of the changes from the existing parking code to where we're at now with the proposed. The complexity with trying to follow some of those changes is that a lot of the land uses have been consolidated. So they're not as easy to track in a simple spreadsheet. We can certainly provide that as an attachment, and I'll practice articulating this in a way that simplifies it more. Well, if it's complicated to explain to us, how are you gonna explain it over the counter every day? Yeah, I think the point is to create a final table that's simple and not to track, when somebody comes in, not to track where we were 20 years ago to where we are now. Yeah, but that's what we know for our purposes. We need to understand what is changing. And so I think that we beat this horse to death. So I think, John, I used to you understand what we need is to be able to clearly track what's being changed in this parking table was difficult to figure it out, even for a numbers guru like Commissioner Villalante, which I am not. So if Allison couldn't get it, then I know there's no hope for the rest of us. So yeah, let's try to get through your presentation because we are required to take a break at 1.30. So the parking reductions, which follow the parking ratios table, these are mostly a consolidation of parking reductions that were actually previously available in the code. There are a couple of new ones. So the new ones include that up to 10% of parking may be converted to bicycle parking. If you're located within a transit priority area, which is defined by public resources code, then there are some parking reductions allowed. Shared parking, again, that was previously provided for. If you have a approved transportation demand management plan, then there are some parking reductions allowed. And then the next three bullets there summarize state law required reductions. So due to historic resources, ADUs, or accessory dwelling units, affordable housing, and then, sorry, not the next three, the next two. And the last bullet point there shows a parking maximum. We actually had that in our existing code, was a little known requirement, but we do have a parking maximum to not allow more than 10% above the required parking. And then the new major section of the code is for bicycle parking, which we had very few standards for previously. So we've completely re-hauled this section. This includes bicycle parking requirements as a percentage of vehicle parking requirements. This is modeled after the city of Santa Cruz bicycle parking code, which we got a lot of really positive feedback from bicycle advocates on and some developers on. There's also new design standards. We looked at a few design standards from around the San Francisco Bay Area. And then my work with public works on those. We also allow properties, as I mentioned previously, to convert vehicle parking into bicycle parking spaces. Shower facilities are now required for new development or what we call major enlargement, so not for existing facilities. And then vertical bicycle parking may be allowed with specific approval. And then we have some other major changes to the code. So one of these, I know, has come up a lot here, which is the exceptions to roadway standards. So there is in the public works design criteria, there is a set of roadway standards that define the widths for vehicle lanes, sidewalks, and bicycle lanes within those roadway standards is actually an exception for the local roadway standard, which reduces the width. And then there's an exception to that exception in our code, which allows people to not build that reduced roadway width, but actually get approval for something that is not that reduced roadway width, but something totally different based on a design that they get approval from the, both the commission and the board of supervisors on. And these exceptions can be based on a number of things. Sometimes they're environmental. Sometimes it's due to neighboring developments not having the same facilities built out. There is an exception for that in the code. And then, and some of the justifications have been because of the size of the roadway facility available. Sometimes it's due to the parcel size. So what we did is we looked at a number of examples of where these exceptions have been approved. A lot of the developments that were getting exceptions to the roadway standards approved were minor land divisions. So very small roadway or very small projects where the roadways were functionally a driveway. And so there's now in the code a proposed approach that allows for what we call internal roadways and internal driveways. And these two types of facilities allow for a different build out than what is in the design criteria currently. They still provide for bicycle and pedestrian facilities. So those two are still built in there. They still have to meet fire code requirements, but they can do that within a reduced footprint for the roadway. The internal driveways are meant for four units or less. Internal roadways can be for a larger development where the roadway is essentially it's been offered to the county for dedication, but the county is denied it. And it's not connecting to major, it's not connecting a publicly or county maintained roadway to another county maintained roadway. So the idea is that the roadway is something that's probably maintained by an HOA or by the residents. And it's a smaller one that's functionally a local roadway. And again, it would still have bicycle and pedestrian facilities and the parking requirements would still be met, but we would allow for a reduced roadway within the code so that they wouldn't have to come for an exception and go through the whole design process vis-a-vis that exception. We also have a new set of standards for drive-through facilities, which we do allow for some drive-throughs. And so we went and looked at other code examples or code examples from other cities. The site distance is a new section in the code as well. That was previously just in the design criteria and sort of implemented through the industry standard practice. And so now we've codified that. And then there were some changes to the surface lot design standards just to reduce the required aisle widths and bring that up to current practice. And so the next slide here, we're gonna talk a little bit about the Portola Drive streetscape concepts. I know that some of you are familiar with this project. This was incorporated into the EIR and sustainability update project. There is three, there's the existing conditions as you can see on the slide. There's a near-term concept and a long-term concept. The main difference between the near-term and the long-term concept is really the feasibility and cost. So the near-term concept can be done without making changes to the curb line. Whereas the long-term concept includes major changes to the curb line and the landscaping. They both are a road diet. So they, as the term implies, a reduction in vehicle lanes where you go from four lanes to three lanes where you have one lane each direction and the center turn lane. They both have improved bicycle facilities and sidewalk facilities. The near-term concept focuses more on because there's no changes to the curb. It focuses more on improving the sidewalk at crossings or intersections, as well as providing painted improvements for the bicycle facilities. Whereas the long-term concept actually can provide wider sidewalks and improved curb cuts. So those are the major differences there. And I think now I'm gonna pass it back to Natisha to talk about the coastal access and placemaking and move on to parks. Sorry, on the East before you continue on, can I ask you a question about that and about the Portola specifically? Sure. Because you're talking about the near-term and the short-term. I just wanna clarify, is that you're talking about the one lane in each direction with the internal turn lane? Is that still the plan for that area given? These are all, yeah, I should have said this is all plan level. So these concepts that you're seeing are considered design concepts. They would need to go through design engineering and if or when they were gonna be implemented long-term, there's no funding identified for these projects. I know that there's a lot of community feedback on these concepts. Another, we recently released the active transportation plan for the county and that came up as one of the comments or questions on the active transportation plan. And for that, they've identified improved protected facilities on this corridor, but it doesn't necessarily preclude or incorporate a road diet. So that's sort of a long-winded answer for saying we don't know what will happen on Portola Drive. The EIR will cover a road diet if that's the direction we go, but we do need further engineering studies. We also do know, and this is called out in the list, it's Appendix J of improvements for intersections and roadways. We do know that there are intersection improvements needed in this area, both for operations and safety. So we did look at that as part of the background information for the EIR as well as just the general planning and identified some basic level improvements for the intersections. So that specific, those specific improvements are included in the general plan update or sustainability update, but the road diet itself is very conceptual, it would need to go through a lot of work before it became real. I just, hi, everybody, Stephanie Hanson. I just wanted to add a little bit to that, that after the pleasure point plan was accepted by the board in 2018, the direction was to study these concepts in the EIR, which has been done, there are some recommendations for where intersection improvements are necessary to accommodate the concepts here. We recognize there was a pop-up project this summer that had some execution issues and didn't go as well as a lot of community feedback about the concepts. So the general plan policies and implementation strategies in the access and mobility element have some general language about this concept, which is to study it further and determine what improvements are good for development, seek funding and so forth. I just wanted, I didn't want the commission to be under the impression that these are the improvements that we're making. There's a reason why it was studied in the EIR and then there's general language now as a policy and implementation strategy regarding it. It's not necessarily something that's going to appear on the capital improvement program next year or anything like that. So just to add a little bit. Yeah, thank you for that. Since this came up, now I'm confused because nine of the staff before you identify the proposed general plan, the implementation strategy that actually does seem quite specific if there's a new development, it says clearly require new development to build plan lines for the Santa Cruz County SPCP, which is the plan. So I'm a little confused now. The plan line has to be developed, right? But there's a lot of work that goes into that. This is just a study. This isn't, this is general, but actually, you know, it seems like if you are building a new building, you actually will have to make improvements consistent with this policy. If, should this policy be adopted? With the plan line. A plan line, yeah. So, I mean, a plan line is simply a plan for improvements that could be made. We wouldn't necessarily, it doesn't necessarily mean that those improvements get built. We actually have a lot of plan lines that are not getting built right now in the county in one of the major projects that we identified with Public Works is to update a number of those plan lines to be consistent with the ATP. So, it's, but it's the first necessary step to identifying whether or not the improvements that have been, I looked at at a conceptual level or will work at an engineering level. Well, and it seems a little premature given, you know, the pop-up project last year yielded kind of questionable results. Yeah, I think that the pop-up project yielded questionable results for a number of reasons. One was that the intersection improvements weren't implemented alongside with it. Well, we don't need to go into the specifics of that right now. I'm just, I think that this section needs to be clarified and yeah, it's frankly a little confused by it right now. So, I'll let you finish the presentation because I know we're almost up to 130 and we can talk about it after the break. Yeah, I'd like to circle back to this though as well because I'd like to know how much we are specifically adopting, you're part of your presentation included the existing conditions, near-term concept and the long-term concept and I would like to circle back with this as well is how much we are endorsing, codifying, approving a particular, I mean, in like she said, AM 2.1 I, it's at the Pescher Point Commercial Quarter which holds streetscape concept and Pescher Point guiding principle parts and I'd like to know how much we are, how specific that is and then encouraging or requiring even development plan lines so to go that direction. So I would also like to circle back on this when we have a chance. So thank you. And pass this off to Natisha then to talk about coastal access in place making. Thanks, Ani. So one of the major changes that's happening for general plan chapter seven is that a lot of the coastal access policies used to exist in that chapter seven parks, public works and sorry parks, recreation and public facilities chapter and a significant portion of those have been moved to the new chapter three access and mobility chapter. So I think I will pass this back to Ani to kind of discuss that more access portion of the coastal access place making policies and we'll discuss a little bit, touch a little bit later on coastal access that's included in chapter seven. But I just asked what you mean by place making. Sure. So. A way finding. Yeah. So place making is generally a concept or a term used to refer to the community creating a sense of identity within the public realm. So it's in the roadway, it's often done by, sometimes you'll see it with murals on the street or in general art in the street. Sometimes it's done through signage and sign it when we say way finding we really mean signage that directs people to a particular set of key destinations. I think to really, I don't wanna take up your time but a lot of these terms which I guess are planners terminology are not accessible to most members of public. So once again, as I did make the same suggestion I made before when you have these terms that are specific to your area of expertise could you make a definition page? Cause I wouldn't have any idea what those terms mean and yet they're very, very important. Maybe there could just be the definitions when you're using terms that need to be explained to the general public. Yeah and I think it's a good idea to have call outs like that in the general plan as well. Because it's getting more technical and more jargony. I understood the old titles these are good and they're more inclusive but they're obscure. I know when you get used to using them they're clear to you but they are not gonna feel very accessible and you can explain them pretty well in a short period and give them, give them the context they need. I think that would be really helpful. So just to get to Natisha's record. So I got placemaking, what's wayfinding? Do if you read signage, why not just say signage? Because it's a specific type of signage that directs people to a set of key destinations identified by the, it's often for tourists or people who are in the area. That was good, you just made a very clear explanation in one sentence that I could look up now. So the coastal access section as Natisha was saying or the coastal access policies as Natisha was saying, a lot of them were moved from the parks and recreation elements relating to specifically to points of access that are places that people can access the coast from our roadway system. So that was the thinking behind it is that they're related to how people move and how people need to get there. So we moved a lot of those policies over to access and mobility. If they were specifically related to trails or maintenance because the maintenance of coastal access is done by the parks and recreation department, we left them in the parks and public facilities element, so you'll still see some there or if they're trail specific, then we left them there. But in general, the majority of them were moved over to the coastal access, excuse me, to the access mobility element. Also, we had a major update to the local coastal plan guidelines between 1994 and now, so we had to create a lot of new policies to be in compliance with those LCP guidelines. Most of them are about maintaining coastal access, improving coastal access and creating new coastal access. So not surprising policies out of left field, but just supporting that recreation. What you're saying is anything having to do with trails and the coasts are separate now. So if we had a trails plan, would it include coastal access or would it not? That would be up to the parks department, but it certainly could. Trails are generally within the way we sort of made a fuzzy separation is that trails are generally within parks and used for recreation, whereas the facilities that are discussed in the access mobility element are, they can be separated, meaning not in the roadway, but they're all inclusive. So not just recreation, but often used for commuters or access to destinations for daily purposes. Okay, what about the tremendous number of places where we have public easements? What, sorry, what's the question? Is there, is a trail a public easement? I, it could, a public easement could be part of a trail. All right, well, I'm not gonna, I think that's a very narrow definition, but go ahead. Okay, I'm not sure I understand the question, but there are policies related to easements in, I believe both the access and mobility element as well as parks, recreation and public facilities element. Okay, real briefly, there is a large plan, which has been around a long time, to connect the parks with trails, which involves public easements. So you could get from one park to the other, it's a safe park, too, and I don't know where that would fall in this. That would be a parks master plan, which is out of scope with this. But there, the trails that will connect parks would not be park trails. There would be public easements. That would be included in a parks master plan, which is out of scope with this. So I'll pass this back to Natisha now. And so I just wanna let you guys know that we have to take a break at 1.30, so if you could wrap up the staff presentation by then, that would be great. Yeah, so we had originally proposed to allow the commission to sort of have a focused discussion on transportation at this point, but it sounds like you prefer to kind of continue on and just finish the presentation. Well, because I think we do, I think the commissioners probably do, I'll have a lot to say. I know that I have some comments, but we're mandated to take a break at 1.30, and then we need to take public comment, and then we'll have questions for in comments for a staff, I'm sure. Natisha, is this a good point to take a break then? If, I mean, I don't know how much longer your presentation would go on. We have about four more slides. Let's get through those four slides, and then I wanna apologize to the public that we're gonna have to take a break until two o'clock, and then at two o'clock, we will hear from the public. Okay, great. So community services are critical to both high-quality neighborhoods and commercial vitality, and chapter seven of the general plan, the parks, recreation, and public facilities element, excuse me, addresses topics related to community services as well as community facilities to support existing and future populations in a manner that's consistent with sustainable growth patterns. More specifically, chapter seven includes policies on parks, recreational, and cultural facilities, public facilities, public services, and utility infrastructure. The sustainability update project proposes a partial update of chapter seven. So it addresses the new element, addresses the same topics as the existing element, and incorporates some updates to a chapter that hasn't been substantially changed since its adoption in 1994. So it's now consistent with new state laws with new local plans and industry practices, but most of the changes that you see in the chapter simply streamline, consolidate, and reorganize existing policies. I had a question on tape in that section of transportation parks and public facilities. There's a table called 3.9 that has stuff like large animal keeping regulation and regulations for offenses and stuff. What's that doing in parks, public features, and transportation? And I thought we were gonna discuss that kind of thing separately. Sorry, I'm not sure what table you're referencing. Can you clarify? Yes, on page 34 of the staff report, paper 3.3-9, summary of Santa Cruz County Code Amendments. But it's under this general section of Transportation Parks and Public Facilities Graph EIR description. Okay, so is it included in the attachment, the project description from the EIR? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's yes. Renee, that's just a summary of all of the code amendments. It hasn't been edited down this particular table. So we're not talking about any of those specifics now. No, we'll get to those on the 13th. Okay, so. All right, I'm trying to follow you along in my staff report, so we'll go ahead. Okay, great. So first we're gonna talk a little bit about public facilities. So the public facility institutional land use designation was previously included in chapter two of the general plan, the former land use element. And it was moved to chapter seven in this update in order to consolidate public facility policies in one location. The P designation characterizes lands used for a variety of public serving uses, including schools, fire stations, government buildings, water supply and treatment facilities, as well as privately owned facilities built and maintained for public purposes, such as churches, hospitals and landfills. And the destination was updated to establish standards for maximum building intensity as required by state law. So this sets a maximum building height consistent with the standards and the implementing public facilities zone district, as well as a new maximum lot coverage range of 40 to 95%, which accommodates the variety of public and quasi public serving uses that are appropriate on P designated lands. The P designation is also intended for appropriate ancillary public facility activities and this includes residential uses. And this update retains existing policies that permit residential development, including 100% affordable multi-family housing on P designated lands, as well as school employee housing on school properties. And the changes that you can see in this section simply reflect the density increases that were proposed for urban residential designations in the built environment element that we've discussed and reviewed at the last study session on June 8th. In the county code, the proposed changes to the PF or public facility district incorporate new development standards that are consistent with commercial zone districts, including increasing the height maximum from 35 to 40 feet, as well as new standards for medical mixed use, which we also reviewed in detailed at the last study session, but the standards are provided here as well on this slide. So some of the most significant changes are pretty much focused on consolidating and streamlining and updating the chapters. We noted earlier, it's really a partial update. And so some of the changes that you'll see in this section combined some related public service sections that used to be separate. Those are listed here, school care facilities, fire and public police protection were combined and the three separate sanitation facilities sections were combined into one section in this update. Other sections of this chapter that include more substantive changes, updated for consistency with current plans and best practices, particularly related to the utilities and infrastructure sections. And this includes policies related to water supply and storm water. In the county, local water districts and groundwater management agencies are responsible for planning for the water supply in our area, while the county plays a more important role in protecting the quality of the water supply and then requiring users to conserve water. However, there was a new strategy added to the general plan to support groundwater sustainability and bring the general plan into consistency with the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. And another key change in the general plan related to water is that policies were updated to be consistent with low impact design strategies that are already required in the existing county design criteria. And that includes, you know, bioswales, permeable services. And this update simply requires new development to maintain the capacity of the site's storm water retention as well as recharge groundwater resources consistent with the design criteria. So we'll discuss some of these water policies in more detail at our next study session on July 13th, which will focus on natural resources and additional water policies included in chapter five of the general plan. Chapter seven also includes new policy based on the county's climate action strategy regarding wastewater reclamation and energy conservation. There's also some updates related to the integrated waste management section which makes it consistent with new state waste reduction laws. And the chapter also includes a new telecommunications and broadband objective which includes a new forward-looking policies that really lay the groundwork for expanding broadband access to underserved areas of the county and according with environmental justice schools. My just so you know, we're at 130. So is this your final slide? This is the final slide and then we have the recommended actions. So I can kind of- So let's move through it quickly. We need to respect the TV folks. Thanks. Yep. So to talk a little bit about parks, policies in this element, it addresses land use related to recreation, set standards for parks and address the provision of adequate park facilities in our communities. The revised element really retains and consolidates and updates those objectives and policies related to parks and recreation. So that includes that the designation was updated to establish new development limitations as required by state law, including the new maximum building height which is consistent with the implementing zone districts of parks and recreation and open space and the timber production district. It also includes a maximum lot coverage of 0 to 40% which accommodates the existing range of building intensity allowed on or designated land which can range from, you know, the out space, open space for active recreational uses such as neighborhood parks and recreational facilities like the symptom swim center to more low intensity passive uses to preserve the scenic values of open space lands. And the changes to the parks planning are not really proposed except to reflect any projects that have already been completed and to align with the county park strategic plan which was completed in 2018 by the county parks department and developed in collaboration with the local community. This plan sets out the vision and strategic priorities for the county's park system for the next 10 years. In chapter seven, there is a new goal created based on the strategic plan, the goal 2.0, opportunities for all to provide opportunities for people of all ages, incomes and groups and abilities to recreate and active spaces and enjoy passive natural open spaces. As Anise already mentioned, some of the coastal policies were retained in this chapter specifically related to recreation at the beach and maintenance of coastal access because those are closely tied to the concepts of parks and public facilities. And that's also closely related to, as we discussed earlier, the trails and recreation corridors section which is included in chapter seven. This section largely remains the same as the existing general plan with more of a focus on recreation that works in conjunctions with trail access policies included in chapter three of the access and mobility element. And it also provides strength and support for the development of a future regional trails master plan that would link county park facilities and implement the Monterey Bay Sanctuary scenic trail and California coastal trail. So looking ahead, we have another study session scheduled with the planning commission for July 13th to review code modernization, agriculture and resources as well as a review of the EIR. And following these study sessions we'll return to the planning commission in August for public hearings. With that we'll end the presentation today with the recommended action which is to conduct a study session on the sustainability update focused on the access and mobility element, the parks recreation, public facilities element and amendments to the county code. And we also just wanted to confirm whether the commission would like to hold another study session for further discussion and for the commission to provide additional comments and any proposed changes that we might want to discuss before the public hearings begin. Otherwise that concludes our presentation and we're happy to answer questions. I know we'll be taking a break here but I wanted to add that Annie Murphy and Stephanie Hanson who are involved in this project will also be available to answer any questions and should be elevated to be able to answer any questions that the commission has. Okay, thank you very much. So I wanna let the, any folks I understand there's a number of people waiting to speak on this item. So I just wanna apologize that we are required to take a break now to give our community TV folks who do such an awesome job building these remote public hearings for us so they can take a break. And so we will return at five minutes after two continue the meeting and we will hear directly from the public at that time. Thank you so much for your patience and understanding. Thank you. Good afternoon everybody. This is now 205 and we are back. I just want to apologize. If there was anything that I was saying during the break I did not realize that I was unmuted and I hope there was no offense caused by anything that was discussed. No problem at all. So let's go directly to the public. Lizanne, can you tell how many folks would like to speak to us this afternoon? Right now I have one hand raised that is Patricia Brady. Good afternoon Patty. Could you please unmute yourself and speak for the record? Yes, thank you very much for the time. I really wanna send my appreciation to the commissioners for the level of detail you're really taking on this issue. This plan has been in process for six years and basically over 12 days, you and we the public are being asked to accept it. I'm really here for another agenda item which is the density but I'm going to have to leave. But I would like to speak to the fact that as one commissioner commented there are different needs throughout the county regarding parking, transportation and even road modifications. And this does not seem to be the concept that's being presented here. And pleasure point is one of those that even yesterday as I was coming back from the airport the driver said, wow, there is so much traffic and there's no parking. So this is a known issue to people. We in our position paper which you have all received as for the county's plan to be realistic, flexible and balanced. And we would really appreciate if the drawing table would make these considerations rather than theoretical what ifs because the reality is different than what is on paper here. Also, let's see, what else? Well, again, I'd just like to express my appreciation to the commissioners for the level of detail that you're inhaling on this very, very important issue. Our legacy as those that are speaking out in yours depend on how this plan plays out. And what happened in the past doesn't matter for 2022. Our realities are very different and that's what we should be looking at. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Patricia. Lizanne, is there anybody else? I'm not seeing any hands raised at this time. Oh, Celeste has just raised a hand. Good afternoon, Celeste. Would you please unmute yourself? Good afternoon, Celeste. Hi, I'm sorry, I just missed the last speaker. I hope I'm not repeating anything. I wanted to speak about the rezoning of the corner of Thurber and Soquel Drive. And it was existing as office commercial, neighborhood commercial and urban open space. And the proposed change is to urban residential, high-density flexible use and community commercial. And I wanted to ask that it not be light industrial. I feel like the corridor that that exists on has plenty of that type of business adjacent to it. And it doesn't really respect the residential neighborhoods that abut that area, like Santa Cruz Gardens, the residents behind Dominican Hospital and also that Thurber is a single lane, mostly in and out to at least Santa Cruz Gardens. And so I just feel like there's enough of that type of business already. And there's also all the high-density housing that you can imagine in that corridor from Mission to How along Soquel Drive. So we have all of that. And it seems like a really strategic lot where it could be a lovely community plaza similar to the Swiss street plaza for the residents that are, I feel, largely ignored. It's always thought that Soquel Drive is just businesses and it's not. There's tons of residents that could benefit that wouldn't have to drive elsewhere to receive those types of benefits from that plaza, a community plaza type of thing. Thank you. I was one, hello. Okay, I don't see any additional hands raised this time. Okay, I knew some folks were there earlier in the morning, but it looks like they probably dropped off. So if you do one last check and see no one else, I will then close the public hearing. There's nobody else who has their hand raised this time, but I will just remind everybody if you would like to speak, please raise your hand by hitting the hand icon which you will find at the bottom of your screen. If you move your mouse, you're cursor down there. And if you're speaking, if you're speaking by telephone, joining us by telephone, please press star nine. And we do have one additional person who's now raised the hands, Alex Vatan. Alex, good afternoon. Please unmute yourself. Hi, I hope you can hear me okay. I just wanna add, sure, thank you. For some reason I got the hours on this meeting wrong and I wasn't able to attend the earlier part of this meeting, but, and I don't know if it was discussed or mentioned, I just do wanna mention that in my read the plan and the code updates, I did find missing some discussion or again, maybe it's not quite right for the planning department, but I think with a lot of parking technologies changing very rapidly with stack parking and robot parking, that really dramatically changes the economics of a lot of that say the fixed cost of doing underground parking, if you can now amortize that over a much, larger volume of parking, if you can do stacked parking like that. And I was somewhat surprised that it was really not germane to the analysis, but that if we're gonna really think about this plan for a long term, I was going to talk to be, take more time if possible or maybe look at what other communities have done, if they have thought about how these more emerging parking technologies can be considered as we're rewriting the code. And I guess the, or Larry. Alex, we can no longer hear you. You seem to have lost connection. Can you hear us? It seems that we've lost Alex. At this point, I could hear he was breaking up. Alex, we do apologize for that. All right, can you hear me? You're back. Yeah, I don't know where you lost me, but I just wanted to say, yeah, I think it would be great if we can figure out a way to encourage underground parking a little more and think about that in the code, however possible to allow for some of them the more emerging technologies that are gonna be able to increase the density we get with stacked parking, et cetera. So it'd be great to see some consideration of how can we get more parking actual underground. So anyway, thank you very much. Thank you, Alex. Is there anybody else who would like to speak at this time? If so, please raise your hand by hitting the hand icon at the bottom of your screen or star nine if you're calling in by telephone. Not seeing any additional hands raised. Okay, so then we will close the public hearing component of this item and bring it back to the commission. There is no action really needed for this except to ask questions, comments. So is there a commissioner that would like to start us off? I will be glad to. Thank you. My comments, I'm just gonna go through the document where I had comments or questions and by the page number. So my first question is on page 10, which I think I already referred to, which is, I'd like to see an example when we come back to look at this of the LOS and VMT applied standards. VMT standards applied to a specific project or street improvement or something. So I can understand how you're evaluating traffic in a very specific way because of necessity, when you explain it, it's very general and I don't really get a sense of it. So I'd like to see some examples. So I understand what the change means. And then on page 11 on the second paragraph above the chart, the board directed staff to make additional changes to the TDM approach. The first change was incorporating an incentive in the SCCC that reduces parking requirements to people within the urban services line and with a half mile of public transit stops with the bus pass provision. And then you go into, then of course, there is a great deal of explanation of that in the back, farther back in the document where you give a sample of what such a contract with the developer would look like. Is there any, aside from this one project which you have given bus passes out, do you have any sense of if other jurisdictions have tried that? So there are state laws that allow for parking reductions or exceptions if you're within a half mile of high quality transit. There's also some cities that allow for those same reductions that go beyond what the state laws allow for. I don't know of specific developments that are comparable to the types of developments that we see here in Santa Cruz. So I'd have to do a little digging to find something that would satisfy your question. Propose that to you. So this is, okay, that's fine. And you're only proposing it within the urban services line, correct? Right. And high quality transit is something, is a very specific definition in the public resources code. At this point in time, we don't actually have any in the unincorporated county. High quality transit has to meet, it has to be 15 minute headways at a stop satisfied by more than one bus route. And the way that Metro or transit district plans, bus routes means that we don't actually have a bus stop that meets that definition currently in the county. In the county period? In the unincorporated county. I believe there are a couple in the city of Santa Cruz, but not in the unincorporated county. Well, I just find this a prop. I think I can understand why you're proposing it. It might be worth doing, but to use it as a way of getting people to drive less. I'm not so sure what about people have to take kids to school. Most people drive their kids to school and you're suggesting that they, you're trying to get them to take a bus with their kids to both come home and then go to work themselves. And most people drop their kids off and someone picks them up coming or going from work. What about senior citizens for which a half mile is a long walk? And what about if we ever get a winner again? I just don't, I can understand why we want to encourage it. And it's maybe a great proposal, but to say it's gonna cut down on people using cars. I don't know if that will attain that goal. And those were just a couple of examples. I know that when I looked at public comments, which I looked at a lot, the biggest objections to people that people are the most trouble to were this idea of trying to reduce driving by coming up with prohibited ways that make it harder to drive. And I'm just not sure if that's gonna really result in what you want to happen. I think, so I'm not sure if that, do you really think that's gonna work? I don't think having a bus pass for a lot of people here, it's true that a lot of people are low income people will may use them, but other people will just think, well, that's nice, but I'm gonna get in my car. Especially if you've got to drive kids or you have doctor's appointment. So for whatever, is it realistic to think this makes people's drive less? And then the other thing is, I think it's fairly unenforceable if you're gonna, people are gonna sell their bus passes, give them away, forget them. I mean, it's just to administer, it's gonna be a nightmare and I don't see developers wanting to do it because you're putting the burden on them. Large projects have a lot of turnover. I mean, I can think of it and I won't go into it here. Lots of reasons, I don't think it's a measure that's gonna necessarily get people out of their cars. I don't think it should, I think it's a great idea, but I don't think it's a strategy that has money legs. So the bus pass program along with a lot of other TDM measures is an incentive. It's a carrot, not a stick. It doesn't force people to get out of their cars. It doesn't require them to do that. They can still drive their kids to school in a vehicle should they choose to. It's an incentive that if not provided isn't going to change anything. If it is provided is one more way that people can change their behavior. So by not providing it, we're not changing the status quo. By providing it, we're at least providing some kind of incentive to do something different. It does have to be provided. I think we're agreeing with each other. As an incentive, it's a good program to put it to purport that it is going to get people out of their cars, I think is a misnomer. I just want to say that. I just don't think it fits in a way to get people to stop driving. But I think it's a great incentive and something with considering if it could really be administered and forced in a way that makes economic sense. And if developers are willing to become administrators of parking permits, which I doubt, but that's what you're proposing. Well, we're not proposing developers become administrative managed parking permits in the bus program, bus parking, excuse me, bus pass program. It would, if it was a residential development, the passes would be administered by an HOA. If it was a employer based type development, then it would be managed by a transportation coordinator. The developers, we all know once the project is developed is no longer in the picture. Well, I agree with you that I think for employers, it has makes some sense. If you've ever belonged to an HOA, it's a volunteer organization. Sometimes you have people getting a hard time getting people to even join it. And if you're going to give them administrative duties that they'll need to do anyway, I've dwelled in that long enough. I wanna come back to page 13, which is big change, which is reducing the number of parking spaces. So if you build a one bedroom home, you're gonna require one parking space, which means that people are gonna have to use a garage to park their car because there is, in Santa Cruz, it's unlikely that there is one person living in a one bedroom. It's more likely that there's at least two people. And if it's students, maybe five or six. So how does, I just don't know that it has any legs in reading the comments that there was uniformly, if you look at pages like 95 to 103, when people were talking about what they want, it wasn't less parking. So I just don't know if it really makes any sense. And I also wanna say in the rural area, everybody needs a car so there's no other way to get around. So if you have a house, a two or three bedroom house, there's gonna be teenage kids or maybe seniors or maybe, you know, the idea that everyone's gonna, I just don't see, I don't think it's, it's realistic. So, and of all your feedback, there wasn't any, there were vast majority of people who didn't think it was a good idea. So I can't, couldn't, I don't see how it's really going to be effective. And if we have tiny homes and they're gonna park in driveways, then no one's gonna get out of anywhere. So I don't know. But I mean, two spaces means you, most people use their garage as kind of a storage place and they have games there and equipment and so on. So you're gonna change the way people live because everyone, most families that have, you know, two or three kids, they get older, they have a car, their grandparents live with them, two people work in different places. How do you see that working? For what, the way people, most people live here? So the parking space reduction for residential units is based on fairly common standards that are used at other jurisdictions. We are seeing Santa Clara, San Jose, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, in Monterey County. So we are also seeing that the state is now through legislation requiring a reduction in parking spaces for residential builds. If somebody were to build a new single family home, they could choose to build a two car garage for a one bedroom if they wanted to or requiring one space. So... That's a parking space that's not a garage, right? Just to be sure that I really am understanding you. Your garage doesn't have a parking space. Off street parking. So the, you know, the code is a minimum right now. Some codes in some cities use parking maximums. We have a parking minimum and we do have a parking maximum, which is no more than 10%. So that would have to be, you know, acknowledged but an addressed, but I, you know, it's for one bedroom home, if you have a garage and a driveway, then you've got two spaces in tandem. Well, then maybe I'm not understanding. What do you mean by parking space, though? We don't mean the driveway. So what you're saying? A parking space is any space that's off street. So a parking space would be your driveway. Sure, or a garage. So if you have a garage, you can have, you can park one vehicle in a garage and one vehicle in a driveway. Okay. But I don't see any responses to the feedback you got. There was, this was the most strongly opposed by all the people who commented, but you don't see any response. We are still collecting in the process of collecting comments and I don't know that we're gonna prepare individual responses to every comment that we receive, but we are just now starting to update the draft documents that were released. So, and this is part of that process that we needed to collect input from the Planning Commission before we started making changes. Well, I was referring not only to the individual comments, but when you did the surveys, looking at the guesses and knows of what I would like to see and what changes I think are okay. It was startling how many people opposed the decision to limit parking. I just know when I look at the denser developments in Santa Cruz and up here in Scott's Valley too, everybody's got to get to garage. They pull it full stop and then they park their cars in their driveway. I think this is a big change. Okay. I just think we need to respond to the fact that that is the single issue. It's a big change. So we've got the most negative response to. You have other comments, Commissioner Shepard? Yes, I just need to turn my pages to them. In addressing water, which I guess we'll talk about a lot more in the other study sessions, you didn't go into much detail about the fact that the districts have planned project to address water availability and new development must secure. I mean, I think it kind of lost over that because it's not your responsibility to provide water, right? And we're sorry, I'm slashed out. We do have some policies that address water quality as it enters the supply. So low impact development policies, but we are not water suppliers. So we don't address that aspect of water management. We have one policy that might be an implementation strategy to be in compliance with management plans. But in general, our strategies are more around managing the water as it enters into the groundwater supply. There are also existing policies on requiring letters of water availability from the supplier before permits are issued for a project and those entities are part of the review team that looks at any project as well. So without that, they couldn't get a building permit. That's not new, that's the case now. Okay, on page 33 on section 1310, 2020 to 2080, you mentioned the proposed amendments for modernization amendments to permit application processing procedure changes use approval to use permit separate from site development permit, redefine site development permit, the separate from use permit. What does that mean? We'll go over this in depth at the next study session. No problem, we can just skip it then. There were a lot of those changes I didn't quite get. And I assume that that would also apply to changes in 13.10, the 20s and 30s. All the items on page 34 and 35. Some of these are related to the parking standards that we have looked at. Well, I don't think anything on page 34 is right. 34 does have the parking standards. This table is meant to kind of help anybody trying to get familiar with the project, understand what sections of code are changing for the project as a whole. So specifically then, there's regulations to concerning fences and retaining walls. Is that going to be discussed on the 13th? Yes, we can discuss that on the 13th. Highlighting what's interesting to the commission and what we think the major changes are. And if that's one of them that the commission wants to particularly review, we can make sure we cover that. I would like to review the combining districts, the agricultural preserve and farmland security combining district, the regulations for fences and retaining walls, the outdoor storage of personal property and materials, and the animal regulations specifically. And then on page 35, the last, very last Title 16 environment on resource protection. Design standards for rural, private roads and dry voids has moved to parking and circulation as has updates and clarifies ag and land preservation standards. Is that something we will talk about then as well? Yes, there's an access question in there, Anais. So the beginning, so I'm not sure if we made that clear. I'd just like to know what has, what it is now and what you've proposed changes are for those two seconds as well. The first part of that question I can answer, which is just to say that the requirements for access and circulation have moved and were consolidated into a new chapter, 1316. 1316 is about parking and circulation. So if there's something in particular of concern there. I'll have the design standards for rural, private roads and driveways changed. They were moved into 1316. But that's the change, let me just move them. We move them, there is some strike through underline listed out in them. I think we actually made the, so the driveway standards, even though they were called rural driveway standards, some of those standards were applicable to all driveways. So we made that section more comprehensive to address standards for all driveways. All driveways, whether they're in the urban or rural services area. Right, right. You don't think there should be different standards for places that are in large parcels in rural areas? There are still different standards that I don't have the section memorized, but there is strike through and underline for the exact areas where code was changed. Okay, and then moving up, and I haven't got many more, but on page 53, I'm bringing this up again, where I think it says the third paragraph, the first complete paragraph on page 53 is breaking the cycle. And then there's a small paragraph under it, which says this ordinance, which is about, again, bus passage, will incentivize the construction of low car housing, allowing projects to greatly utilize reduced parking requirements in exchange for consistent metro funding. I think having underground parking, shared parking, those are policies that can achieve some of those goals and they're doable, but I don't support allowing developers to have much less parking in exchange for bus passes. I just don't think it really works or makes sense. I just want to say that. And we need to see how it's going to reduce, how it's really going to work, and if it would really work. I think there are those other policies, just like that person who got cut off, his phone didn't work very well before. Let's work on reducing cars parking by policies and recommendations that we can actually achieve and that are doable. So I think, so I'm just pointing out to you that this is looked at here in this section that I just read you on page 53, it looks like you're going to, the impetus is to make that into an imp policy that achieves that goal. And I don't think that that makes much sense or that it will work, whereas the others are doable and I think they'll work. And again, I'm only bringing it out because I'm looking at the large percentage of what feedback you had in the surveys you did and what people have said, which is mostly more about parking than any other thing. Okay. I've got one more. And I'm just saying I'm referring to some of, if you want to see what I'm talking about, look at the surveys on page 92, 93, 94, up to 100. Okay. Those were my specifics. I have to say it is really useful in our role as planning commissions, which looks at code to see what changes are made to all these code sections. I understand that when you give us a general overview, that's helpful, but we're going to deal with people who are actually needing to know what the code says and they want to know what it means. So I would like to see in the upcoming study session what codes are changing with great consistency because that's what we live with, is what the codes are, not what the policy is. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner Shepard. Those were all excellent comments and I wrote down some of the follow-up items that I can summarize at the conclusion of our comments. So is there another commissioner who's ready with their comments? Yes, commissioner Sheridan, go ahead. Thank you. So in the recreational part of where you say parks, recreation, there's a section there that you originally referred to it as park recreation and open space, but then as you went down the column, it became parks and recreation. I don't know what page that's on, but I think it's important to be consistent to include open space in all the sections that refer to parks, recreation, and open space because I think they're all supposed to be under one title. Is that? I'm not sure I'm following the comment. Are you able to be more specific? So my understanding of parks is that parks is referred to as parks, recreation, and open space. That's their official title. They're not referred to as parks and recreation. So at one point it was referred to as parks, recreation, and open space. And then later in the column is it parks and recreation. I think that can be extremely confusing, especially for somebody like myself who has had a lot of interaction with parks, recreation, and open space. So I think the title is really important to make sure that's included. You're talking about the title of the department. Of the sections that all the sections should include, the department is not referred to as parks and recreation. It's referred to as parks, recreation, and open space. Okay, there are actual titles even longer than that for the department. Is it? Cultural resources too. Oh yeah, they have, oh that's true. And then another comment I had about this is at some point you mentioned the trying to create a trail that was consistent through our county to connect trails and to connect transportation trails. I can't be specific because I wasn't taking Copey's notes, but there's a little bit of a slippery slope when you start putting open space, passive trails that then become transportation avenues. And I think it's important to have delineations when a trail is part of an open space that there needs to be some sort of caveat when you begin to create transportation on an open space corridor. So I don't know how to address that, but just being somebody that is highly conscious of open space and passive recreation, I can see how those kind of trails could easily open up to transportation and yet they're at the same time, there's that balance of protecting the passive element. So can I speak to that for a second? Yes, yes. So I'm not sure if I made that comment in the presentation or where that comment was made, but we did intentionally separate out trails as more of an open space recreational element and keep that in the parks, recreation and public facilities section or element versus the access and mobility element which addresses more of a transportation facility. So we did work with Parks and Recreate, the Parks, Recreation, Open Space and Cultural Services department to kind of figure out what the policies where the delineation of those policies would be. And we know that they have a lot of work to do with regard to identifying trails and maintaining them and making sure that they aren't overutilized or not to say abused but used for the wrong purposes. So we did try to be conscious of that. We don't have a, in this update to have a trails master plan or anything that identifies specific trails, but I know that that is on the radar for park staff. Well, I should mention that there has been plenty of work done on it in the past and those documents still exist for a trails master plan. And I think I brought that up. There are a lot of places in the county and the rural area like railroad track, for example, along Zioni where people use it to walk their dogs and walk. So it is essentially a trail corridor. That's the kind of thing I was meaning and the idea was to see if you could get people from one park area to another. They're called kind of linear parks in other communities that's common and they are not all within the parks department but I didn't want to get off track and then with passive recreation that nowadays includes bikes for better or worse. Yeah, I kind of agree with the concept that these are really helpful connecting pieces between land elements and sustainable communities. It's a very helpful thing. And I think ultimately when you try to do something like that you need to be able to have some caveats in there to protect an open space element that is definitely not, should not be part of something like that because there's elements in there. And when you start changing the general plan sometimes those elements fall off and the protection elements fall off. So I think I'm just putting this in as a comment of an awareness and with no specifics just that it's there and that it could be extremely problematic. Well, one more comment. We don't have a lot of large open spaces but up the North Coast we do. And I think what I was meaning is you want to have trail access put down when you develop property so people can get through them if they're large open spaces and that's just part of a planning process. All right, so, and then another, let's see, that's it for now I think. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Commissioner Sheridan. Commissioner Villalanti. Thank you, Chair Dan. I just had a couple of questions that I was hoping that we could ask the staff. One of which, and I just want to pull up my notes here. I had a question on that same chart that I think it was Commissioner Sheppard was asking about on page 11. In reference to the TDM when it's talking about the proposed changes it says that the way that because staff is proposing essentially reducing the size of development to be consistent with some of the actions of the board from 25 down to 10. But the way they're saying that this development can come into compliance was to choose real list of strategies listed in an appendix to the general plan. And I apologize if I just missed it. I wasn't, I didn't see it either. I thought it was valuable to have access to that list because the way in which developers could come into compliance with that TDM and select from that list in that appendix was I thought to be a valuable piece of information and I'm glad it wasn't the only one that couldn't find it. I mean, it said it should be listed as an appendix to the general plan and I didn't see it on the project website. And so I don't, I don't know how to provide it next time or if you guys can even provide it sounds like maybe hasn't been crafted if you guys provide what that might look like though because I think it's really important when you're talking about especially lowering that threshold that any development 10 or less would have to meet these standards. I think it's really important to know what, I don't want to use the word burden but what requirement would we be placing on developers that are building 10 units or more in our County because I think the direction from the board with the 10 units or more with the change in the parking was actually to actually make development easier and if we're putting this other one I want to make sure we're creating a balance because I think we were making recommendation back to the board about, well, we made this to be consistent with your previous recommendation that we might be saddling developers with this other TDM requirement. I want to make sure that I'm informed anyway about what that looks like and what I'm making the recommendation back to the board. So I understand that it hasn't been created yet but it would be helpful for me. If when you come back you could give examples of what that might look like give us a sense of what that might include because for me not having a whole appendix of the general plan feels like I'm making a decision with an incomplete picture. So that would be helpful was a question I had. So thank you for letting me know. I just didn't try to just miss it because this is such a big package. I easily could have just missed a whole appendix to be honest. The other question I still have that I'm still, I know I don't want to beat it to death now but I still would really like clarity on that portfolio question. I would like to better understand really what we are saying we want for the future. The portfolio plan is so clearly called out in the general plan and in their sustainability plan here that I want to make sure I understand what recommendation are we as a planning commission and therefore then the board ultimately creating as a vision and then saying we want as a community moving forward. I want to really better understand so if you guys could come back to us. I know that there are some planning language with this planning line stuff but I would like to really better understand are we just saying we want sustainable transportation and that's just too vague. So what parameters are we saying we're looking for? Because I know that it was an imperfect pilot program but I also know that the iterative response to that was that it didn't increase the bicycle transportation. Even if we set aside the fact that it had some obstacles with being able to stay in place, let's say it's a play with putting it but it didn't create the results that we wanted, right? It didn't create increase bicycle transportation which is what we would have expected and so I would like to better understand what is it we as a commission are saying and what is it we are saying as a community that we think sustainability looks like in that quarter because it's so specifically called out. I would like to better understand when we come back what the planning staff feels that's part is supposed to say and what statement is the board saying because I think it's a really important piece of the transportation quarter just similarly like with the portion we did last time when it came to zoning we had very specific language about what do we think the medical corridor is. We had rules, we had a vision. I feel like the portal pieces called out means that we have a vision for this piece of the community and for me it would really help in making a decision to better understand what you guys feel this language means so that I can make a recommendation in the end. So those are the two things that I would really like clarity on for this piece and I appreciate you listening. Thank you. Do you have any other questions or comments? Commissioner Vialanti? No, thank you. Okay. So I have a few and but I, the first one was Portola Drive and so I wanna thank Commissioner Vialanti for articulating pretty much exactly what my comments on that are as well. So I don't need to go over that one. So one of the things and first I just wanna start by thanking you all for the tremendous amount of work that went into this staff report and the level of interest that we all have in this and the public I think is that this is one of the more important elements of the plan that we're gonna be considering. And when we have development projects one of the main things we always hear about is parking and traffic. So it's of no surprise that this is probably one of the sections of this proposed update that's gonna receive the most attention. So lucky you guys. So one of the things I just wanted to say in general is that there's a lot of aspiration in the plan which is good. I mean planners, policy planners should be aspirational and looking to the future. So but some of the things I think we need to think about a little bit differently. And one of the items that struck me was that like I'll just use for instance with the VMT discussion on page 10. So there's a lot of reference to moving to VMT will reduce cars on the road and reduce cars on the road will reduce greenhouse gases. But there's no visioning or thinking into account that we are moving pretty rapidly to electric cars. And I just read of something when I was reading this item I started looking about what are the projections for electric cars in the future? Well by 2040 pretty much all of the things I've read seem to be there's an agreement that at least 30% some projections are even higher will be electric cars. So I do think that we need to take that into account when we're talking about cars being responsible for greenhouse gas emissions that's gonna change in the future. And so I think that this in general needs to think about how we're all not just cars buses everything moving to electric and not hang our so we're not gonna be able to hang our hat entirely on reducing greenhouse gas emissions because we're getting cars off the road. Well, greenhouse gas emissions are gonna go down anyway because most of the cars are gonna be electric in 50 years. So that was that. And then I had a question about the TDM and Renee actually was bringing up some of my questions but then what came out from Renee's question was that we don't have a high quality transit system as defined right now. And so that wasn't made clear in the staff report that came out as a result of Commissioner Shepard's question. So I think that's really significant and needs to be acknowledged in the plan documents because when I was reading this, I was questioning like, well, Jesus, our Metro is that, are we a high quality transit system? And then later on on page 11, it kind of implies that we're not, but it doesn't really say that. It says, the element includes new policies that just worth the development of high quality transit. So I just think that this needs to be spelled out a little bit more grounded in reality in that we currently don't have a high quality transit system. And so we have to also think realistically, are we going to be able to get there? Because if we can't get there, then that cannot be a component of the TDM, right? I mean, we can't like it's, we can't hang our hat on like giving developers less parking and giving them bus passes. There's no bus stop near them or there is a bus stop where the bus only comes every half hour. And that's just not gonna work for people to get to school or to the job. So I think that that needs to be, and it wasn't clear to me. So when that's as moving forward in this process, I would like that to be a little bit more clear both for the commission and for the public. Okay, I did have some questions about the employer, the proposal to require employers with 50 or more employees to implement a TDM program. I'm not opposed to this. I think this needs to, we need to know more about it. And then more importantly, my question on this is, has there been outreach to those companies that have 50 or more employees to find out how this is gonna affect them? Because looking at the chart, it looks like what might be expected is to hire a transportation consultant or they have hire a staff person to manage this like they do up at UCSC. UCSC, though, is a behemoth organization with 2,000 plus employees. But if you're a mid-sized retail store downtown with 55 employees, that's a big ask. So I'd like to know if there's been outreach to those employers. So this is a requirement for new development or at enlargement of development. The transportation coordinator requirement can be met by working with the RTC. They provide a free program or low-cost program through Recology Action. So you don't actually have to hire a full-time person or even a part-time person. You can pay for this program through Recology Action. And I also would like to get to... That's for the 200 plus employees. So does that mean that means if there's a new company coming in? So like... New or enlargement of development. So the... And I would also like to get to Commissioner Violante's question because this is related. I think that the TDM and VMT requirements are complex. And so I'll just break it down a little bit more, which is that all of these requirements are like a menu of options. They're not... If you're a small residential development with 10 units, the list that's referenced, which has not been created yet, would not... You would not be required to implement all of the things on the list. You would be required to pick and choose to reduce your VMT down to the threshold that's required by our adopted code, or sorry, by our adopted regulations. The regulations are driven by state law to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Acknowledge that more electric vehicles are coming online, also per state law, that does not negate the former state law, which requires us to regulate and reduce VMT on a project level basis, based on regional goals. So that said, the TDM reductions, we have gotten the comment that they need to be simplified from supervisors. So we are looking at that, and that little table is partly to say, we know we need to simplify this in the code, the proposed code, to make it easier to understand. The intent is to make it as easy as possible to implement, while also requiring TDM to be something that's done at the point of building your project as a self-mitigating strategy, so that you don't have... So the developer has less impacts when they come into the environmental review process. I thank you for that. So I'm still unclear though about the proposed requirements for there's 50 to 200 employees and then 200 plus employees. And so you indicated it's for new development. So does this mean if you have company acts that is here, that's 200 employees and we don't have that many of them, and they want to expand a building, then this would be a requirement on them? If they came in for a permit to expand a building, correct? Now... So if your company acts and you just have 200 employees right now, you don't have to implement this program. We don't have the resources to do that, right? So yeah. If that could be made clear, so if your company acts and you're reading this, you know, oh, actually, this is not gonna apply to me. It's only gonna apply to me if I expand to this building over here. That would be helpful to have made clear. Does that make sense? Okay, thank you. I'm moving on. I'm sorry to interrupt. I have an engagement I'm late for and I have to leave. I don't know how that affects things and I don't think you're having any vote but I'm sorry to interrupt. Okay, thank you, Lisa. I wrote down your comments so we'll summarize them. Thanks so much. Thanks everybody. Yeah, okay. Okay, now I just have a couple more comments about parking. So on the chart on page 13 that other folks have referred to, why is the park, why are the parking requirements different for multifamily than simple family? So as I was saying in that presentation, maybe not clearly enough, we're trying to tie them to square footage, we're trying them to square footage to try to incentivize or assist developers who want to build smaller units to not have to eat up so much land with parking. So in other words, it's allowing people to design smaller homes without having to build out the same amount of parking. So I mean, I think that's a really worthy goal from my perspective. I also think that we need to build multifamily development that actually will serve families. And so that, you know, that does mean a higher bedroom count. And also, you know, I think that one of the things we should think about is if we, you know, we're going to have to build up and at higher density, but we also want not just singles and students to be able to live there, but we want families to see that as a desirable place to live so that we can sustain our community. And so I think that, you know, one of the things I think is a tough one to think about because I understand what you're saying. And I think that is correct. Developers prefer to have lower parking requirements to facilitate their project. However, at the same time, when we're thinking about building different types of housing for different types of uses and families and having fewer parking spaces makes that development less desirable for families. And that's, so I mean, I think it's just like a philosophical kind of question that, you know, the commission here, and then of course the board is going to have to be grappling with. And, you know, I'm pretty sure the direction is going to be in lowering parking standards, but at the same time, that makes it tougher if you're a family of four to choose to move into that multifamily development if your parking is going to be constrained and then it's going to be in the higher density area where parking is already hard to find. And, you know, in lower density, single family home neighborhoods pretty much easier to find parking. So it's, you know, I'm okay with it with the single family homes because we kind of have a lower density and unincorporated area. But if we're going to be building up, I think we also have to think about, you know, building, creating spaces or, you know, different types, not just singles and students and, but for people with kids and families and higher and more people in their household. So I'll be thinking more about that. And it's also the reason why I harp on making sure that we incentivize more open space. It's for the same exact reason so that people see those places as a desirable place to raise a family. Michelle, can I just add something to what you're speaking about? Sure. Right now we are really encouraging accessory dwelling units. So for new construction, we're going to see a lot with accessory dwelling unit and a junior accessory dwelling unit. But the new parking requirements is, how do they fit in? Accessory dwelling unit parking requirements are actually regulated by state law. So we cannot require more than one parking space for an accessory dwelling unit. And if it's within a half mile of any public transit spot stop, we cannot require a space at all. Just to add to that and maybe to circle back to the comment about parking in the coastal areas, we are able to kind of address the Coastal Act and do have different parking standards, higher parking standards for ADUs that are in the coastal areas, the designated areas, the Solstead, Dozdo, Loda. Right. So the way the state laws is even if the bus might area this is case comes every hour they can still not have a parking space. Right. Unless it's in the coastal zone. Yeah. Go ahead. So I was just also going to say that for the multi-family comments regarding multi-family, you know, we do see mix, it's really a mixture of housing units that get built in multi-family. So it's not, I don't expect that it would just be all small unit developments, but a mixture. And so the parking requirements are structured as I'm sure you know, they're structured so that if it's under, it would be under 750 would be one space and then over 750 would meet a different requirement. And then there's also guest parking still built in. So we did try to account for having a mixture of sizes of units in a single development. I appreciate that. So I'll leave it there, it's been a long day. And I really appreciate all of the work that went into this. I'm sure there'll be more. I had one more question or comment on that appendix that we know that you mentioned you haven't made up yet. I don't see how we really, when we come back, I don't really see how I can usefully address this without knowing what kind of things are going to be on that appendix for developers to choose from. I have zero idea and it's such a core principle in this plan. I'd really like to see that. So it's, it actually, the basis of it already exists as the county's VMT guidelines, which are the adopted guidelines for our VMT thresholds that we have to implement for any project that's subject to CEQA. Those are available on the planning department's website. We might have to send out a link separately because they're, I have to describe to you how to navigate to them since we've been making so many changes to our website right now. I'm just saying when you bring this back, we'd like to see it. I don't want to spend another half an hour trying to find it. Yeah, I would suggest, you know, at least before the August meetings when we are to take direction. And then I, you know, for me, one of the other general comments is that, as I think it was mentioned by another commissioner is the most important part of this document group that for us to look at, look at are going to be the strike through versions of the code. And I understand that, you know, there's a lot to print and so you don't want to give that to us. So, you know, I'm going to be just printing them all out myself. So, but if the staff wants to print those for the commission, I think it's really critical. I mean, that's where the rubber meets the road is the strikeout version of the chapter 13. I have to say when my constituents come to me, they have the current code and to have the strikeout version what's proposed means I can explain things clearly and people can understand clearly because people don't go to the planning commission very often, the planning part very often. So they may know what it was 10 years ago. So having what it was and what it is, I would agree. I think that's going to be a document that we'll keep and make use of and maybe save you guys some time and trouble later on. Yes. I understand it is available. So it is available online and I have been looking at it but it hasn't been super helpful to me to just look out online. And so I will be printing them myself. So I just wanted to put that out there. It's quite a lot to print. So maybe you could consider and then let us know by email after you've talked about it amongst your staff whether or not that's something that you could provide to the commission. I'd pay for getting it if that's the issue. We held off thousands of pages, right? So in making them available online gives the commissioners an opportunity to really choose which part of this massive project you wanna look at. If you're requesting that we print part copies of the general plan or maybe just the strike out version of the code, we can do that. It takes about 10 days to make it happen. We won't charge you for them because it's probably, I don't know, $300 a pot but we can do that. We're trying to save some trees and trying to save for Michael Lam having to do that. But if that's what the commission wants, that's fine. I mean, for me, I was really having the strike-through version of the code is what would be helpful and I also wanted to save you from all of the things you've just mentioned. Is the just the code changes 1,000 pages? Because if that's the case, I almost feel like that's a whole other separate issue, maybe. It's just pretty hard to navigate online, especially if you don't know, as you say, the county site changes all the time. Not everything works. It depends on what browser you work. I really wanna be able to have this as a reference. That's all. And I agree, it is the code changes. We're happy to provide you with the code changes and strike-through in paper, if that's what you're asking for. The project documents are available in one specific place that has been available since the end of February, is not broken down. We just added one appendix to it, it hasn't changed. It's all been there. And I realize, do realize this is very different from what the commission is used to. It is for us also, but there shouldn't, at this point, I hope there isn't any confusion about where to find the documents. They are there. I think your website is great. I think it's really well done and all the documents are listed with a link to each one and that's been great and super helpful. But now I feel like, at least for me, I'm getting to the point where actually I have to start really thinking specifically about what's being changed. And so when I get to that point, that's when I usually like to specifically look at what exactly is being changed in the code and not just kind of like what is described or theoretical. So anyway. So you can certainly order those and make them available for your next meeting. That would be great. Just want to express my appreciation, because I do and I really am hoping it's not a thousand pages of code. It might be as possible. The underlined and strikethrough, you know, tend to get really long because you've got both the existing and the. So it's like two codes, two sets of codes. Yeah, it is, yeah. But that's fine. I'll do that. Okay, I really appreciate you. Yeah, not just to be clear, what we'll print is what is out there for public review now. It won't have any of the changes that we've been talking about. I think we'll have to kind of take the commission's action and incorporate that into the next draft that we make available that you'll have for ordinances as we go to public hearing. So are you still iterating then and making revisions to the. We are just starting right now to, we have not done any other iterations. We wanted to get to the commission, consider the public comment that we've heard, consider the commission's comments and feedback, and then prepare the new drafts that would appear in the ordinances for your recommendation. So I can make the print copies happen, but just so you know, it's what's out there now, not what we're preparing for the ordinances. So we'll not reflect the comments that you've had since we've been meeting together on these study sessions. That's fine with me. Okay, I guess I'd like to hear from Allison what you think, I mean, if I'm gonna ask to print the codes, I guess I'd rather not see them right before, see the final version, like your final version. I just want to have enough time to really look at it, that's all. And it takes time. I mean, you know, I know, I don't do this for a living. So I have to set aside a lot of time to do it tonight. I really want to be able to do that. This is very important in my role as a planning commissioner, and I still work full time. So I just want to, I don't, to me just getting either the current version or the revised one as long as we have time to look at it, it's fine. Yeah, I was gonna say our last planning, our study session is July 13th, correct? And then we don't have another hearing. We started hearings on August 24th. Yeah, we put out there, the question of whether the commission wanted to schedule an additional study session to return to some of these issues. Because I think we're getting some comments, but we're not necessarily coming to resolution on how the commission would want to see the change. So there's two ways to go. We could schedule another study session. I'd have to recommend that it be on July 27th or if that's inconvenient, maybe a special session on the first week of August in order for us to have enough time to prepare the ordinances. No, no, I apologize. I wasn't, I wasn't clear with my point of my comment. I share Dan's concern about spending a significant amount of time dedicated to reading a thousand pages of changed code, holding to have it not really be the version we're considering. And so I was trying to understand the duration of time between our next study session and when we would actually be considering the actual code is what I was trying to make sure I understood our timeline. So I apologize, I'm not suggesting we have another. Oh, okay, no problem. I was trying to understand timeline, so I apologize for not being clear on my question. We're trying to come back with ordinances on August 24th. Yeah, so that's what I was trying to understand. That's about a month. But that also assumes that you're not going to make additional revisions based on that. That July 13th. July 13th is to finish up these study sessions, go over the code mod and what's in there. And then at that point, if we're not going to have another study session, we'll be diligently working to modify these drafts to address comments that we heard from the commission and the public or the direction we got, for instance, from the board on the TDM item. Well, on the 13th, how many other items do we have? On the 13th, we have a big agenda. You thought this one was big, this is the code mods, which is a lot of what's happening in the code changes and changes to agriculture and natural resources. There's not too much in natural resources. And then we're going to do an overview of what's in the EIR so that you're aware. Well, I wouldn't be willing to break it up and have a meeting in La Cholla. I guess my concern is I want to make sure we, whatever we're reading, I want to make sure it's the final version. I don't know that it serves the commission to spend hours reading code that is not really what's going to be before us. Whenever we take it up, I almost, if the timeline hadn't been so public, I almost would recommend that we push out our hearing on this in order to give us time to read, since you are making changes, and I don't know that it's even possible given that we've published our hearing timeline at this point, but I almost, given that you are making changes, there are revisions and I want to make sure that commission, I mean, for my own comfort, and I don't know, again, I don't even know if this is possible given that we've made our timeline public. I agree. This is probably one of the most important things we'll do for many years, and I want to try and do it, see how fast I can get through it. That's not the way I want to do this. It's almost like I would, and I don't know, Stephanie, seeing your face, like how possible that is, because there's going to be revisions to this huge package. I'd rather have us dedicate the time to reading the final code, what the changes to staff is making based on the input we've provided, and give us the extra couple of weeks to not have our first hearing until, I'm not talking about adding a meeting. I'm almost talking about delaying until September 14th being our first hearing or something like that. Again, I don't know if that's even feasible or legal given that we've already published these timelines, but I'd rather have the commission, and I obviously would like to hear my fellow commissioners' input. I'm sorry that there's only two other ones of them here today about this idea that if you guys are still in the iterative process, I'd rather not waste my colleague's time reading code that's still changing. I don't know, Commissioner Dan. I totally agree with that. I would rather just get a printout of the final code changes and as far in advance to the August 24th hearing is you can do that would be great knowing that we have another opportunity, I think September 14th to make a final recommendation. So yeah, I agree with the commission ability. I would agree too, as long as I think that's planned. If we have to re-notice something, well then that's still possible. Okay, does that sound somewhat clear, Stephanie? Thank you. Yeah, I guess what I wanted to say is that staff has some corrections. We've seen some errors, perhaps cross-references aren't correct. That kind of thing. The more substantive changes are anything that's happening at this commission. So there wouldn't be all new material that it was like, oh, we never saw this before. We never talked about this before. We were thinking if the commission is unhappy with this parking standard or whatever that standard would change, we would highlight that piece. I just wanted to say that these are not documents that are going through big rounds of changes as you're reviewing them, just so you know. To help with that, my recommendation to staff would be that when you do provide us with kind of the final version that you use a double strikeout underlying version so that we can choose to start reading it now and that we would know come the version you ultimately provide us, what changes are based on our own comments so that we can, this provides us the longest timeline in advance so that if we choose to read the code now we can and then when you do provide us the ultimate version that we know that by using the strikeout, the double strikeout underlying version, we would know that these are changes since then. So if your staff is amenable to that, I would do my recommendation. It would make it easier for me in reading the code because like for example, that's a good idea. The odds item, I actually found it difficult to read because they had like glue and red changes in the staff item and I was like, well, are these all changes? But if they just use this double strikeout underlying version it would have been helpful for me. Can I just chime in for a second? This is riveting conversation and definitely something that I spent a lot of time doing is pouring over the code. So, you know, the only changes that are gonna happen are gonna come from my office at this point. Stephanie and her team have handed them off to me to review and creating a brand new version that is a clean version that incorporates the changes that you have made, I think would be, it's doable given that it's probably not gonna be a lot, right? And I mean, the changes that you're going to propose are gonna be probably not that lengthy, I would imagine, right? So I think we could provide copies of a new strike through underline with just those specific sections, right? Because as you've heard and as we've been talking about, I mean, these are thousands of pages. It's very, very long. This is just an incredible lift for all of you, for staff, for everybody. And I just wanna be cognizant of creating new versions of things that, so just that you know that, you know, it would just be those sections that you touch. And, but I think if we're going to be kind of editing the code and as I think is your duties, right? As commissioners is to go through and propose edits and suggestions, then yeah, another study session makes a lot of sense, but it's something that I would urge you to begin now, just if you haven't already is looking, it's very dense, it's very long, tedious work. And so if somebody has been doing it for weeks, it's just, I don't know how much time you're gonna have to really go through each and every page, but yeah, it's like Stephanie said, we're not gonna be making substantive changes. So what exists now online is pretty much what it's going to look like. And those substantive changes that are going to be, that are going to be incorporated are gonna come from this body. And what about the using the double underlying suggestion? I think that's a good idea and doable. Yeah. Sorry, commissioner Shepard, yeah, the double underlying meeting, the changes that you all have made, is that what you're suggesting? Is that what that? Well, we haven't made any changes, so we're just giving general feedback. So any changes will be staff's iterative changes from what's already posted online right now. We would make any changes until August 24, buddy. Yeah, so I guess what I'm asking is, commissioner Shepard's suggestion that there'd be double underlying. So what are we talking about when we say double underlying? Well, Stephanie, why don't you explain again? I don't want to speak to Allison, but I think what we were trying to do is to highlight changes that have been made since the version you've already looked at. Like whether that's double underlying or highlighting or however that happens. But so it's real clear to you what has changed since the version that was prepared. I think that was the concept. Well, when I look at legal contracts in my business, that's where the double underlying shows you what's been changed since the last version. I think that'll work. So I think that the concept was we should all get going on digging into the code now, but that after the conclusion of our study sessions, staff will be working diligently to make any additional modifications to the code. And once as soon as that's complete, they're gonna make that available to us in a double strikeout version in paper prior to the August 24th meeting. Does that represent what we all discussed? Yeah, and if I can clarify just for a second, what you're saying is that after the study sessions and staff will then take whatever conversation. So I haven't heard anything yet that was kind of a proposed change, right? So I haven't heard anything at this point. I just said that because staff indicated that they would be making changes to what's already posted online. If that's not gonna happen, then we can get a printed version of the code right now. But I think what Allison and I were trying to avoid was getting a printed version of the code now and pouring through it, but then what actually is in our on our agenda packet for the 24th is something different because staff is still iterating on the code. Staff's not iterating. Staff is making corrections and would be addressing the commission's comments. Daniel may iterate. It would just be my iterations, but it won't be substantive. If I have any, if I come across anything that needs substantive change, I will bring it to the commission and you will know about it. Well, let me do the base. If you don't mind an example of what you were saying for example, next session on the 13th, we're gonna talk about one of my, we're gonna talk about fences and we're gonna talk about large animal regulations. So I'm our general regulations code. I've met with the 4-H people. I've met with the horsemen and I've met with groups and showed them the proposed changes to the code and they had suggestions that I think I would like to bring back. So I will be making specific suggestions in this. I feel like I just expressed my reaction to thoughts on the code, but on what we were looking at in this, because we haven't been looking at code. So I still think that that could be a double strikeup version is what I was talking about after the 13th. So based on Daniel's comments, it sounds like they're not going to be changes by staff at this time. They're simply going to be, what I'm gonna call small edit and that the majority of the code is not, is going to stay the same. And then, Daniel, based on what you've said originally, it almost sounds like you would recommend the code be printed now and that you could bring us a small packet of page. Yeah, I don't know what to call it. I'd like of the places where the change occurred and that would be, at least what it sounded like from you when you decided to weigh in here and that your recommendation was that the code be printed now and that you would be willing to provide us with, with the same way when we make changes even on one of our earlier items, when we make changes to these larger portions of code, we don't actually bring back the big code, we just bring like the little pieces where the changes are made. And it sounds like if I was hearing you correctly, it sounded like that was almost your recommendation, which is have staff print the code now and you, since you would be the one making the changes, would bring us back the locations where those changes occurred. Did I, did I understand you? Yeah, I think that could work. I wouldn't, I'm not advocating for printing out any pages just because that's not what I can, I won't recommend printing out all those. Yeah, yeah, so, but if you so desired to have a hard copy of this text, then yes, now would be a good time to do it and to make your notations on the text. So that next time we talk about these code changes, we can actually get down to, you know, your changes, your edits, suggestions, so forth. I would be okay with that. That's what I meant. Yeah, but the printing just, I don't know how much time will be needed. Stephanie, you mentioned a couple of weeks to get that underway, correct? We're talking about just the strike-through version of the code. Yeah. Yeah. Not the general plan. Yeah, just the code. We're all interested in the code. I mean, probably about a week once I order it up. And I don't know if this is possible either, but if it could be tabbed by like, section would be extremely helpful, but now I'm just- It might be another week. Okay. Well, I really appreciate it. I know it's a big ask, but I just don't see any way for me, at least around it, I was gonna either print it myself but you know- Yeah, it's only once every 20 years. Yeah, more than that actually. It's been quite nice since 1994, right? Yeah, and this is our biggest responsibility. We wanna do, I think we really all want to do it right. My recommendation on that is to not wait another 20 years and to do it in smaller iterations over time. And when something comes back to fix it, I just have to say that this isn't gonna be perfect. I wanna temper your expectations that this process isn't gonna be perfect. The code is not gonna be perfect and all of our wishes and wants of sustainability are not gonna be perfect, but that shouldn't hold us back from actually passing something forward to the board. So I don't want you to rush, but I want you to understand that this isn't the end and that we're diligently going through this material and it's a lot and we shouldn't have to ask you to do this again for another 20 years, but at the same time, smaller chunks next time, I hope. But yeah, there's gonna be some pains in here, I think, just hearing the parking pieces, but yeah, I think you'll understand that piece, yeah. Well, thank you so much. And so let's conclude this item and then move on to our last three kind of cleanup items. Is there a planning director's report? And if you don't mind before you go on, I'm sorry, I left two things out of my comments. There were a lot of feedback about why don't we consider Dutch intersections for our meeting? Could you tell me what a Dutch intersection is? Because a lot of people talked about it for the next meeting and then one suggestion I thought was a good idea to consider is tree removal permits or trees over a certain size. At least we've never had that in our court, a lot of other places do. I'd like to get some feedback on that, looking at what people suggested. A lot of people think we have a tree removal process, but we don't and maybe we should for large heritage trees. Oh, sorry, that was just a little small items from going back to big thing. And then I had one overall comment. I understand that the part of the issue has become in since the last 20 years, the last five years or the last 10 years is a lot of the general plan is just getting the county in accordance with state laws and changes in policy. But it feels more and more that the state's running the show and the county just figures out how to accord itself to the state. I'm hoping that when we finish this document, we'll have some vision about Santa Cruz County and what we want to be here, even though we are so much more directed and controlled by state policies. I want this to be a Santa Cruz document. I don't feel that coming out of any of the language. It's more like, well, we have to be in accordance with the state here and the state there and the bigger issues, but what is it that makes this place unique? And it's the reason everybody lives there. There's a vision statement in the introduction of the general plan. Maybe I just haven't seen it. Yeah, yeah, that was built from and very closely resembles what was in the sustainable Santa Cruz plan. Thank you. You're welcome. I need you to go look at it. It is just really difficult to access this all. And I can only spend so many hours in front of the computer. So I think having to think to carry around physically, because I'll carry this around with me and look at it whenever I can. Thanks, Renee. For them, we got to move along here. So let's wrap this up and move along. So is there plenty of director's report? There's no report today. As the report on upcoming meeting states and agendas, you kind of gave us an overview already of the life. I, yes, I can do that. The next agenda is on July 13th and we have a project that I shall actually be bringing for a minor land division that is on center street in Soquel. And there's also an appeal of a cannabis item that will be coming to the commission. And then of course we do have a study session. Right now we don't have anything on the agenda for July 27th. Other than I think there was a potential that we were going to have a further study session, which I'm not quite sure whether we have landed on whether that's going to happen yet. But there's no other scheduled items at this time. Is that cannabis item, the one that's returning to us about up in my district? Yes, who's on the old Mount Road? Okay. Okay, thank you, Lizanne. Ms. Chair, yes. It would now be an appropriate time to ask that we have the discussion about the minutes come back on the agenda. I just want to make sure that gets captured as well. Oh, you're jumping the gun there, Chair. I mean, Commissioner Villalante, I'm going to address that in just a moment. Okay, perfect. We're discussing upcoming agenda items. Thank you. Yeah, are we ready for my report? We are ready. Well, I am happy to report that I consulted my Sturgis. You can't really see it very well. Standard code parliamentary procedure doesn't, sorry for the filter. Anyway, so the planning commission is under the Sturgis rules of parliamentary procedure. And I will read from the approval of the minutes and you'll be happy to note that no motion is even necessary to approve minutes. So you, the board can entertain minutes. So if there are no corrections after, or after all corrections have been made, the presenting officers should state, quote, if there are no corrections or further corrections, the minutes are approved as read or as corrected. And that is all is needed by general consent. So if the chair does not say if there are any, if there are no corrections, the minutes are approved. If the chair does not say that, then a motion can be entertained to approve the minutes. But I read that to also mean that you do not need to be in attendance to approve the minutes. Something like that has just never come up. Also means that if you weren't in attendance, you're, you know, if you were in attendance and then the next meeting, you won't be able to correct anything in the minutes. But let's be honest, nobody really ever corrects anything in the minutes other than spelling and grammatical errors anyway. So that being said, we can talk about if you want, if you want to agendize something for next meeting about whether or not to move them to consent, all that's really needed from the chair is to ask for corrections. And if there are no corrections to basically say they've been approved by general consent. And if anybody, you know, they can voice their corrections. So I don't know if it matters. I mean, commissioner Vialante, you can kind of speak to this if you wish, as far as whether or not minutes should be on consent or not, they will likely be treated the same way going forward if they're on consent or not. Just sounds like folks need to get a chance to read it and then the chair can really just approve them without a vote. Okay. Yeah, that sounds good to me. So I would just suggest we let Tim, the chair, know of this procedure so that he can implement it at the next meeting. Yeah, he'll figure it out. I'm just kidding, I'll send him an email. Okay. That's good. Thank you. I will take the responsibility for that one. And I'm also happy to report that I will be with you all on July 13th and that will be my last meeting. Okay, well, as I won't be there on July 13th, but let me wish you well. And good luck in your new position. We will miss you. Thank you. Yeah, I'm sorry to leave you with such a large project in the middle of it, but I'm gonna get done as much as I possibly can before I hand it off to my colleague, Justin Graham, who is more than capable to handle this project. Okay, thank you, Daniel. Okay, I think that concludes our meeting. And so the next planning commission meeting will be July 13th and I wish you all a great July. I'll see you in August.