 Alright, good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for today's planning commission meeting. Today's date is November 9, 2022, and the time is 9 30am. Sorry about some lighting challenges here. Alright, so today's meeting is completely remote via zoom. There are a couple of different ways to participate in today's meeting. If your computer is equipped with a microphone, it is recommended that you participate via the planning commission zoom link, which is posted on the planning department's homepage at scco planning.com. Alternatively, if your computer is not equipped with a microphone, you may provide comment by telephone to call in the number is 669-900-6833. And when prompted, you'll want to enter a collaboration code 814-8152-8029. And this information again is posted on the planning department's website on the public hearing page. So during key points in today's meeting time will be provided for members of the public to provide their testimony. The speakers will be muted until called on to speak. I will ask participants who wish to provide testimony to either remotely raise your hand by selecting the hand icon on the zoom link, or if by calling and by telephone by remotely raising your hand by pressing star nine on your telephone. I will call in. I will call on participants by either your name or the last four digits of your telephone number. Participating via the zoom link. When I call on you to speak you'll see a pop up on your screen that says unmute. Please accept the pop up state your name for the record and provide your testimony. If calling in via telephone you must unmute yourself by pressing star six. If at any time you have difficulty connecting to today's meeting via the zoom link or calling in via telephone. We do have support staff with us here today Michael lamb. He's been contacted via email. He's checking it periodically throughout the meeting, and it is Michael dot lamb. That's LAM at Santa Cruz County dot us. All right, so those are the instructions to participate in the meeting. I will now turn it over to our planning Commission chair Tim Gordon. Good morning. Thank you for that great intro. Good morning to everyone who's here. Welcome to the hearing of the Senators Planning Commission on November 9 2022. It's 934 and call this meeting to order at this time. Miss Drake, can we please have a roll call. Yes. Commissioner Dan here. Commissioner shepherd here. Commissioner the Elante here and chair Gordon here. And I'll note that Commissioner lays and be is out today. Wonderful. Thank you. Moving right along agenda item number two additions and corrections to the agenda. Do we have any today, Mr. Drake. No, there are none. Okay, great. On to item three, do any declaration of expert take communications do any commissioners have any expert take communications they'd like to declare today. Great. Thank you. Next agenda items agenda for oral communications. This is the time of the hearing where members of the public have the opportunity to speak on items that are not on the agenda today. Mr. Drake, do we have any members I would like to speak at this time. I do see a hand raised. So if we could have two minutes please on the timer. Members of the public will have two minutes to speak on at this time on items that are not on the agenda. And then seeing the caller with the last four digits to 915. Good morning. Please state your name for the record. Good morning. This is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes. Good morning, Becky. Thank you. Good morning. I want to bring to the commission's attention to very important items happening in the community that affects our. The whole of the county really the first is that the process for approving fire code in the county has changed. Originally, each fire district reviewed the fire code and amended it to suit their particular boundaries. This is happening this year. Instead, it is all going to be going to the county board of supervisors. I believe November 14 as the Santa Cruz County fire code. It conforms with the state fire code, but also there are things that are more strict than the county than the state's fire code. It is difficult to really determine that because there is no strike out underlined version of it. In fact, a central fire protection district board and the county fire advisory county fire department advisory missioners have not even seen this. There is it concerns me that these people are being shut out completely and that it will come before the county board of supervisors with really no oversight or input from the fire agencies and the fire commission itself. So I want to make that clear and hope that you will review that document when it comes up at the fire at the board of supervisors meeting on November 14. The second very critical issue is the pure water SoCal project being built right now by SoCal Creek Water District will inject treated sewage water into the aquifer. The final document for public review. Regarding that is now open for public comment through December 8. There will be a virtual public hearing December 1 at 530. It's difficult to find the information about that hearing on the SoCal Creek Water District website. But this is for the public hearing of the title 22 engineering report. Thank you, Becky. All right, I hope people will participate. Thank you. All right, do we have any other members of the public who wish to make a comment on any subject that is not covered on today's agenda. If so, please raise your hand. And again, to raise your hand if you're calling in is star nine. Do we lose Jocelyn? Looks like we might have lost her. Right. Let's see. Mike, are you on by chance? Yeah, I'm here, Tim. All right, cool. I think we looks like we lost Jocelyn. So I think we can move on. If you don't mind helping me out. I just like there are any other hands raised for the item for oral communication. So we can go ahead and close the public comment at this time and move on to consent agenda item. Right now we have our favorite resolution, AB 361. And that is the only thing on the consent agenda item. So if there are any commissioners would like to discuss or make a motion on this and if it could be appropriate. Thank you for your approval. Thank you, Commissioner Dan. Second. And Commissioner Vellante appreciate the second. Okay, with that, we can move on to a vote. As a reminder, we're doing roll call votes on everything while remote. Mr. Lamb, are you able to help us track that? Michael, are you there still? Maybe can Justin do that then. I see that Mr. Machado is available. Do we need to take oral comment on the consent agenda at all? Or did we take it as part of our communications? Usually we have oral comment on the consent agenda. Excellent. Because I see we do have a hand raised. So, but I don't have the ability to promote them because without just without Mr. Lamb, which means we might need to take our small recess until we have either Jocelyn or Michael. I think we can still let's see if I have access. I think we can. So chair, if you want to take a moment on the short recess, I'm sorry. Yeah, I just got off. If we could. Oh, Michael's back. Michael. I'm sorry. Justin just called me. And she asked if we can take a quick recess to get her reconnected. I think her network failed, but she's at the county building so she's back in her email and she should be joining us again soon. Michael, and this is chair if I could just make a suggestion. Would it be possible to just skip ahead? If we have one of the presenters here to just get into the agenda so that, you know, because we don't have to take vote on the study session, they're not action items. So if we could just hear the these presentations, we can, you know, get some work done. Yeah, I think everyone who is presenting is, is with us. I don't have permissions to update or to promote folks. I believe Jocelyn did that before she left because I can see Mr. Reed is with us. Mr. Dallas is with us. And so I believe we actually have our presenters already on and they may be able to begin Mr. And I don't know if your team is also part of that, but I believe we have our presenters, the staff with us for the item. I think this can suggest that maybe a good one. Can we start with item seven. Yeah, I think if that works for everybody we can move past item five and six come back to those at the end. Thank you for motions and voting and just going to study session item number seven. This is the study session report to the planning commission on the 2023 through 25 County operational plan process. For me and climate action and adaptation. Believe that we have Mr. depth less presenting today if I'm not mistaken and yes. How are you sir. Thank you. Let me see if I can share my screen. Right. Can you see the presentation. Yes, sir. Perfect. Well, again, my name is Peter delis. I'm a principal analyst with the county administrative office. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with the planning commission today. We'd like to update you and get input on several initiative initiatives at the county administrative office. The first being the 2023 25 operational plan. The second. It's a project. I was telling you, you should look into the county. I know. One day, I just always. A Santa Cruz like me, it's a project centered around proportionate representation. And third, Dave Reed, the or three director will be presenting on the climate action adaptation plan. So. The Santa Cruz County strategic plan for 2018 to 2024 was approved by the board of supervisors in June 2018. It includes a vision, which is an aspirational statement of the kind of community we want to be a mission, why we exist as an organization and values how we show up to serve. The operational plan is how the county intends to fulfill the mission and achieve the vision from the strategic plan. It's refreshed every two years and updated by annually. It outlines the county's major activities accountable through specific measurable achievable relevant time bound, inclusive and equitable objectives, also known as smarty. In development of the first two operational plans objectives were presented to the commissions and other stakeholders only after written by the departments. Feedback from the board of supervisors and the commissions included that engaging earlier in the process would lead to better objectives. So for the 2023 25 operational plan, the county is focused on continuing to hold major activities accountable to measurable results. Working with community partners to make sure their voices are reflected in the plan. Validation from the people closest to a problem in designing a solution and continue to disaggregate data to uncover hyper local trends and gaps in service. So at this point you'd like to pause and receive input from commissioners. You can also provide written input through the survey link that is included in the staff report I was hoping to paste into the chat here but I'm not sure that I have that. And so, maybe we can just go ahead and get started here so within the purview of the planning commission please consider you know these three questions and we'll go after the one by one year. So, let's start with the first one of, you know what one issue of addressed would have the biggest positive impact for county residents. You can take the big now if you prefer to do it through, you know, the survey, you know, we can leave that up to you. I'll look to you Tim. Yes, definitely so just be clear we can this is the interactive right we can answer this now. Absolutely. We can take notes and provide feedback. We also have that survey as well if you prefer to, you know, respond offline. Yeah, this is, this is, well I'd be happy to do the survey I looked at that also before we started but it, you know, seemed like it would be more easily finalized once we had some more information so I'll do that right after. But you know I think there's a lot of, a lot of things that can be, you know, really positive impact for our county residents and man, I would say probably one of the just comes top mind amongst a long list of things you know that we're always all working on is, you know, transportation, public transportation and more bikeable kind of walkable areas. We go a long way. Any other commissioners want to chime in. I'm happy to chime in. I mean obviously I think one of the biggest things that we are addressing as a county and the planning commission has per view over obviously the sustainability update and then what we're doing next year obviously it's the housing element because the access to affordable housing in Santa Cruz County has a biggest impact on people's ability to reside here in an equitable fashion. And I think that goes to what you're talking I think your next presentation kind of incorporated to this is the Santa Cruz like me if people can live here and have affordable housing and equitable incomes and access to things that it precludes them from having the ability to then participate in their government. If you can't earn a living wage, then you don't have the time to volunteer to be part of a commission. You don't have the ability to participate in meetings during the day or the evening, because you're working both of those times. And so the planning commission comes into the role that they end up playing has to do with the way we build the structure under which people can afford to live here. And that means building the way we create access to housing is one of the biggest ways that the planning commission in my opinion comes into play in terms of that. All right, thank you. All right, we can move on to the next question here. What are two major projects we've already answered this Allison right what are two major projects anticipated within the next two years, though the sustainability plan and housing element for sure. Anything else that you'd like to bring up. I'd like to answer the first one. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I was muting myself while I was talking on and on sorry. Resource management in other words, I'm constantly struck that we look at one goal like more affordable housing, ignoring at the same time do what resources are necessary to support that so resource management and carrying capacity. We can have one without the other so balancing our needs in regards to the resources that are available is a big concern and was a big concern during looking at the general plan changes and the sustainability update, you know, we can build so much housing but we need to make sure we have the water and we are not adding so much congestion and on the other hand we need the housing but I mean they've all got to be looked at together so overall planning of resource management is very important and integration of resource management in departments is important personally I think the state could do a 1000% better job with that too. Great. Thank you for that, especially here in the unincorporated area and the more rural areas were very limited by resource availability so it's no sense planning for increased density if you out on the water and the roads and the fire safety and so on. That's what I meant. All right, so Alison already mentioned to the major projects over the next two years does anyone want to weigh in on any further activities. What do you mean by what are the major projects. So you know projects that are you foresee coming through the planning commission that you will vote upon that you can see would have an impact. Yeah, I think there's some kind of connection issue. It kind of sounds like somebody speakers too close to their microphone. You're trying to mute and let's see if it goes away. I think it's come from Peter's machine. Okay, that's it. So yeah, I don't want to pause. So let's just get through this, but to answer Peter's question, you know, planning commissioners usually don't have a sense of what projects are coming forward, because that's not our role. You know, sometimes, you know, like me and Alison or staff of a board member we do have kind of a in cyber artists knowledge of things coming forward so I don't know that that's like the best question for us but since I do know of some projects that are really important coming forward, obviously the rail trail segments that are under construction right now in the city and then the segments that will be constructed in my book and on the north coast are vitally important. And then there's several infrastructure projects going on in the north coast that are also a really important for access to public open space. I would agree if you're not if you're not part of the county infrastructure, we only see projects when they arrive in our agenda so I don't know that we can answer that very well. So thank you. Okay. And then the last is if there's any data that you use or you wish you had to know, kind of programs are making anyone better off. Well, do you want to redefine what you mean by better off. That's the whole thing that you're addressing you have right, you have like a whole bunch of points of what you mean. I mean, I think Renee is asking a great question and this is really just almost like too broad to even answer because you know, everyone would define better off in different ways. Is it part of the plan to define that. I mean that's I mean each program like should produce outcomes and each program should define better off tailored to what that program is so I mean I think the one of the things I would say is that, and this really has nothing to do with the planning commission so, but I'll just say it anyway, because the planning commission doesn't deal with programs except really like housing issues. And that data every year from, you know, the growth goal, which is, you know, gives us a lot of information about, you know, how many building permits were pulled, how many years are constructed, how much affordable housing has been constructed so I feel like in the housing area, we have a lot of data. I don't know if that, you know, we have any sensor role and evaluating whether people are better off but I think like what you're speaking to or more of the health and human services programs that the county and the health of the state, largely than each program should have outcomes that they're working towards and, you know, I would say that we could do better in those areas because most of the times those outcomes tell us how many people are served, and in the way that they are served, but what's lacking is knowing if it has moved the needle in one direction or the other. So that's the general broad input I would give for a huge, I mean, the county ministers, I don't know, probably hundreds, like over, you know, dozens and at least of specific programs to serve specific populations. So, but yeah, but I think that the county is going in a very direction on this and the operational plan is part of that. So, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think specifically here, right. I mean, we're looking to the planning department to develop objectives for the operational plan, right, that are, you know, specifically related to planning and that those will be measurable objectives. And we're just looking at, you know, what is that data that would be needed in order to, you know, measure whether or not we've been successful. So, yeah. And I'm not I just say I think the planning department actually does a real good job and maybe it's a product of the fact that you know you're dealing with like real numbers here like did this person get a building permit. And did their environmental health clearance, you know, you know, resolve in a positive way. And, you know, and Dave, you know, can speak to this like, you know, we set up a dashboard for fire survivors so we can actually track like, you know, where people are in the process so I think in some ways planning is a little bit ahead of the curve than other departments. And because we can access that data that's helpful for us to understand where we're going as far as building housing or rebuilding after the fire. So, that's my that would be my feedback at this point. Yeah, and I might add to that a little bit that I think that, you know, metrics is really important so you can not just, you know, see where you're at but figure out how to do it better and faster and, you know, continue to progress. And we do have some metrics but there could be more like, you know, timeline between permanent building issuance is good but why is it why isn't the duration that it is why isn't it faster. And not just like from the county perspective, like, maybe the, maybe there was 15 submittals for some reason because applicant had challenges or maybe there was financial challenges or something but if there's a way to get like some more information as to like, not just if projects are happening but maybe the why can help us kind of figure out how to help improve the process overall. Mr Machado. Thank you chair I just wanted to chime in real quick on some of the comments that you, you all are making you know in terms of infrastructure transportation housing needs. And I think, you know, putting those together. One of the things that comes to mind in terms of projects and data is is as we go forward with the sustainability update and which includes a circulation element. Next steps will be a update to our impact fee program or transportation impact fee program which links the housing to the needed transportation elements. And there's a lot of good data in there that will assist in that. And so I just wanted to put that out there because you know that type of an objective would be helpful to meet the needs and goals that you all talk about regularly so I just wanted to put that out there for for Peter's ears to hear that that's a real straightforward project that ties what you all do daily so thank you for the opportunity. Yeah. And kind of synthesizing like Mr Dan and Chad Gordon's comments I think specifically talking about things within the purview of the planning commission and therefore the planning departments. Operational goals and strategic planning. You know, I think that they're going the right direction. I mean, and it becomes synthesizing kind of the this many permits issued to the permit took the, you know, efficiency. So why did the permit take six months versus three months at how much of that was in the planning departments time the plan permit was in the planning department hands and I know that they're actually doing that I know that the planning department's doing those types of things and so the question though is anybody better off for the planning department that question becomes to Tim's point which is how quickly did someone get their permit and how much of it was the county's component versus I know we're working on not having reciprocals due to inconsistency of communication or things like that and so the things that are within the county's control on being able to better efficiently serve the public and so those are the type of metrics that planning department for their part of the operational plan because to Rachel's point. And those are the parts that are in our control versus if we're going to talk programmatic goals of general county operational plan is a whole different thing if we're going to talk, but I think keeping it to this like planning framework. I'm just saying this many were given is not quite enough of a metric versus how and why and the timeline and ensuring so that we can create change based on that is important. The things that are within our control to be better. And I think that I think Rachel's point is right that we, we do get a lot of data in terms of like how many units of housing are built. I think a component of programmatically like we think the planning commission doesn't deal with like programmatically like how many unhoused people are, you know, do we serve through things that don't come to the planning commission, but that is someone being better off right. And so I think that those things do get served through the planning department though right those are served through the housing division and so I think that if you wanted to talk about data that was provided a little bit expanding beyond the planning commission but talking about planning data. Those are programmatic things that you can talk about, and know that the community is better off. That the planning commission doesn't see that data but it could be incorporated to talk about the way that the planning department is serving the community in a housing way or in a planning way in a transportation life. So the planning commission doesn't see but that does the planning department because I can't decide. Mr. Dallas if you'd like us to talk about the planning department or things in the planning commissions per view right now. And so I'm trying to answer a little bit of both on what you how we can best help you in what you'd like us to talk about today. And so I'm trying to kind of straddle both sides. I mean you're on the right track right I mean it does get a little bit blurred between the planning department and the commission for sure right I mean and and the goal here is to help the commission provide some feedback to the planning department, you know and how we can better through these agendas. Yeah, because I guess my point is there's a lot of the planning department does it doesn't come before the commission and so I just I don't know if I want if you want me to answer things that the commission needs from the department or things the commission thinks into better in terms of serving the community and so I just. Yeah, I mean ultimately it could be both right I mean we're here today to present to you that this is this is coming right so the office plan is coming and and that staff is working on objectives here now that will be you know heading toward the board of supervisors you in the spring summer with the proposed budget and so we don't want you to be caught off guard that those are moving ahead and if not have a chance to comment. Yeah, I think that I think the biggest overarching thing that I would just say when it comes to these types of goals is I think that they need to be useful data in order us to enact change. So not just that we did something check the box, that is not a me something that becomes a useful way to make these strategic plans of these objectives. It needs to be something where you can take that data and then use it for a purpose to be more efficient to know that a program needs tweaking. If I check the box becomes a, it's a checklist, it's not a tool, and I would hope that it becomes a tool that we can use to enact a change. I think I've talked enough for a bit. Now I think those are really great comments I was just going to add one more nuance, and I think that this is maybe somewhat unique to the planning department when you're working with applicants. And in order for you to make a decision you're relying on information from the applicant in order to process that permit so I think, you know, just if one of the, let's just say one of the objectives would be, you know, that we reduce our permit time issue is time by three months or something like that, or whatever it is. It's kind of complicated to do that it's because you know you can do all that you can do on your end, but say you're waiting on a biotic report from so and so applicant and that biotic report is taking a really long time because they can't hire the consultant or maybe they submit it to you but it's incomplete so you have to send it back with comments and then you have to wait again. So, so I'm just saying it might make your job harder. You know those types of objectives because you know the face of it it may seem well that's simple like we just need to change the processes and we can make things move faster. And I think that that that could be largely correct but at the same time there's things that are outside of your control that may look like you're taking a long time to do something that's actually something else that's going on that's out of your control. So, I'm sure you will you know this though Peter. Absolutely, but I think it's a point worth noting for sure. Sorry. You can call me Rachel. All right, great. Anything further on this before we move on to a Santa Cruz like me. Okay. All right, so last year after receiving the 2020 census data and the county administrative office partnered with Santa Cruz Community Ventures to gain a better understanding of the makeup of the county's representative bodies right so a survey went out to county commissions boards and advisory bodies. And the findings of that survey were presented in a report called Santa Cruz like me, the value of representation representational government so there have been a couple of items that have gone to the board of supervisors, and this report it's got to them previously. So, we're just going to break free share today just some of the key findings in that report. You know, Santa Cruz, the Santa Cruz like me survey was, you know, the first time the county view data on boards and commissions demographic composition. You know, given the voluntary nature of the survey and that it was only provided to currently appointed members and, you know, we only received a response rate of about 50%. We don't provide a clear comparison of the composition of applicants versus those being appointed so you know we recognize there's some limitations in the data but it's a it's a starting point. But we want to, you know, we recognize this as a first step toward data driven efforts to align with the strategic land goals of toward representation and that is culturally diverse and economically inclusive. So some of the key findings addressed in the report. You know reflect under representation of South County residents and a critical under representation of renters right so mostly homeowners that you see the participate on commissions. Additionally, you know there's an under representation based on race and age. So, you know, and then finally, you know we're also seeing an over representation of college graduates, particularly those people with advanced degrees. And so, sorry, too fast there so you know what's being done to better align representation on the commissions with county census data so we've already begun creating a committee to review variances and proposed solutions. We're updating the applications for these boards and commissions. Doing to collect voluntary and confidential demographic data, and also improving the onboarding process for appointees. Right. So, the Santa Cruz like me committee again meeting monthly in September of this year to identify goals and strategies, outreach to the community track and measure outcomes and assess the impacts of the work. So, again, today here we're just, you know, looking to receive a little input. Again, it can be done through the survey doesn't need to be done here, but just running through these questions. Quickly, you know, you know what one change implemented would move us toward commissions that are representative and inclusive of our diverse community. If you have any thoughts here. Could I just ask a quick question. In the explanation that you just gave the part you said about variances I didn't quite understand that about variances. Did you mean variances of to me variance in a planning regard means something very specific but I think you were talking about something else. What are the variances of who's starting on the community. Oh, oh, oh, sorry. Sorry. Thank you. I can jump in. I don't have an answer for this. And, but something we can definitely think about more. Is there any type of outreach or plans in place that the county's already started or thought about on how to, you know, align these a little bit better. What are the processes of that right and how to reach better to whole communities that we don't typically, you know, engage with, and, and then, and lowering the barriers to that application process, right. So that, you know, there aren't questions on the application that might deter from buddy somebody from responding. If it's not necessarily needed to serve on the commission, right. So, since we talked about education right is it required that you have a college education. Right. And why are we asking that if it's not right so those things that we're looking at. Well for the planning commission usually were appointed by the supervisors so it's a little different than some of these other commissions you're talking about. Well, actually that's a really good question Renee and Peter can you just briefly for the other commissioners who aren't familiar with this. Talk about the most commissions are appointed by supervisor and then there's some at large that are appointed by the board, but could, in case I'm mistaken about which commissions are included in the study could you just briefly talk about that and then could you also talk about what the definition of South County is so we can have a geographic kind of boundary in mind of what you're talking about here. I mean does it include a toss or or not. Both good questions right. What is that definition of South County, it tends to vary on who you speak to. I'm not 100% sure what that in this situation what that definition is but I'm assuming it is south of that toss. And you're correct right I mean a number of these commissions are appointed right but I think it. The change the conversation that we need to have is how do we get other people engaged in the process and create a more absolutely 100% exactly. I would just say though like if you're, you have a supervisor like our district, we represent the north coast and Santa Cruz the city of Santa Cruz. So we have two commissions, you appoint people in your district. So, you know we don't appoint folks from South County because they're not in our district so we have two spots on the commission on the environment those two spots are going to be people from our district and, you know, supervisor Bruce McPherson is in the same boat supervisor conic is also in the same boat so I think that it's. An extremely important conversation to have I think we need better representation on our commissions we need more younger people. We need renters we need a diversity of educational background. I think it's important that understand the data if we understand how these commissions are appointed so that we understand really what we're talking about here and that will help us improve those metrics. Well, and to Commissioner Dan's point about how we define South County, I mean, if we're not, I'm very curious about where we define that line, because I mean, if, because they have many of these positions are not only appointed by the Board of Supervisors, but often they are designed to represent a district. I mean, for example, the planning commission has one person from each district. I mean, if you're not including say after the, the only district that is going to be South County is going to be one of five. I mean, we have the ability to our district does extend beyond after us but the, and we do make an extreme effort in the second district to appoint people from Watsonville and from the even farthest part of the farthest south part of our district but if you're not including the geographic south part of Santa Cruz County, I want to ensure that we're having kind of truth and data and knowing where that line really is and what we consider South County is important because to Rachel's point three supervisors will never ever appoint someone from the South County and even the fourth will be highly unlikely to if you're including parts of say after some will sell the or even correlate us for example to be considered that South County because geographically correlated is actually isn't that much further south than after us. It's just more inland. And so it's I think it's important to me we have that conversation. I just mentioned this not to negate the fact that we have a South County representation problem. We need to get more people from South County appointed. Even, even if we include up top we still probably have a problem with including people from South County, but we just need to speak truth in our data about what it means. We agree with Rachel we need for renters we need more people from diverse backgrounds we, and part of that and I think Mr Dallas you know this which is I spoke to earlier is the fact that without equity and housing equity and access to income people cannot afford the time to be part of these and that's I think what leads to a lot of the disparity in people who have the time right truthfully. I think if we looked at our commissions we have older people who are tired who can give their time. There are already economically stable enough, and they have that access that other people don't and so I think not only is it good that we're collecting this data but it will lead to a conversation of what. We structure our commissions so that people can give the time. Does that mean varying day and evening meetings does that mean, and what does that mean and not just in terms of outreach, but I just, I'm a data purist. As you know, and so I do think it's important that we have consistency and not just self reporting on what that means. I think that we're having this conversation and in terms of how to get bigger outreach, and we're now going to start collecting it for the applicants. So we can have the conversation and then once we have the data and who's applying that we have a conversation on who. How we structure these commissions that people can participate and I think some of the things these commissions are doing will will make it so people can, and I think the planning commissions role will be to create better equity so that people can live here and then participate more. Well, if I can say something it's been brought up my 10 years on a commission, there's lots of people have requested evening meetings but it was always suggested that keeping the county, county building open or is a big problem and it's asking employees to work at night which none of them wanted to so I think it's not like it's not been discussed and then a lot of people who have kids just don't have the facility to make a regular meeting. I don't know, you know, certainly worth all these things are worth considering, but it isn't like no one saw it before they've always just never come to fruition for because of you know costs and administrative issues that's all. Thank you Renee because you brought up something I wanted I forgot to mention that I actually thought of coming into this meeting which is I think one of the things the county can do. I mean, I think it's hard, but I think it's our responsibility is actually advocate for, and I know the planning commissions are going back to in person but I think actually advocating for remote meetings for permissions. I think actually makes a huge difference for participation for people who are young and have transportation issues. I think it makes a big difference for people who have children and or any caregiving need to be honest I think it makes a big difference for people who do have to travel from South County for traffic reasons. I think it makes a big difference. And so advocating for changes to the either Brown Act for commissions or remote access for commissions. I think actually makes a difference for people being because I think access matters and people being able to serve and have flexibility so I think the county continuing when I talked about restructuring the commissions as actually one way that county can do that is to advocate for restructuring of the way these commissions meet, because we saw even at the board of supervisors level that we had more participation when the board went remote than when they weren't. And so the commissions is the same way and I think both in terms of people attending but also serving. And so to your question Peter how do we get more people to serve, encouraging a different way we structure could be one of those ways and that's the responsibility of us to advocate at the state level and I say I mean the county. Mr. Reeve you've had your hand up for a little bit. Did you want to add something there. Just, just to put a finer point on what Commissioner Vialante said right is that, on the end of February, the state emergency declaration ends, therefore all Brown Act control boards and commissions will be required to be in person, or have a quorum in person. So to achieve what Commissioner Vialante is mentioning. It really does have to be a state level change. Not that it isn't a war or worthy consideration but just wanted to make sure that people understood that that is changing at the board and all commissions will be required to have a quorum in person, starting in March. Well, may I add something. Yes, please. I think that's a really interesting point of view it would involve, you know, kind of systemic changes. As you just pointed out, going to an express a somewhat different point of view, I think people on commissions knowing who each other is and meeting each other at some point in person or on a regular basis is still a good thing. You want to have collaborative meetings with your colleagues you want to know who they are and where they are and so on so I think it's harder to be on a commission when other people are talking face so I don't 100% agree. So I just want to say that and then I'm not sure that I don't. I'm a little non plus by the finding that to be a planner and work at the planning for many of certainly on the planning commission issues you certainly generally need an associate or other professional qualification or a bachelor degree. And to get the job in the first place because these issues involve some, you know, basic levels of comprehension and ability and is it a terrible thing that we have a lot of people that have a bachelor degree in our commission I don't understand why that's such a thing to be overcome. I'm somewhat non plus by it. I think I think in this situation right it's, I think we need to think a little more broadly about all commissions and advisory boards and, you know, in just how do we, how do we do a better job right I mean as we look at these next two questions right like, you know I understand that I think we would restructure how this question is this you know, why, why you serve right you were appointed but right how do we encourage a more do. How do we encourage others, what would you know drive them to want to be and serve on the planning commission or any other board within the county right I mean. Well maybe you know we're useful to have a list of commissions I know our two members who work for supervisors are well aware of what we're talking about but I know that there's a women's commission I know there's a parks commission and a planning commission. There's probably 10 other ones I don't know about so before I answer your questions maybe. How many commissions are there. Yeah, I mean Renee I think that that was kind of spoke to my first point I think that you're asking for input from people who don't have enough information to provide that input and, and I think that when you know this presentation is going to be presented to other groups that that's critical information to have and then also this is really a board decision. It's not like how the county could do better board members are the ones who appoint commissioners. So this is really something you know that is the responsibility of the supervisors. And I know that in our office we go to great efforts to find younger people working people. People under the 40 people of color women, which I actually think is missing from your report is data on how many on gender. So I think that that should also be included, but in order to really provide input. I understand how commissions are appointed, who makes that appointment, it's board members, and then the geographic constraints of that board members are under, and why that might skew data a certain way. And then, once we have that information we should look at the data again the kind of what Mr. Villanti was saying is, I don't raise this to use but like, kind of truth and metrics and, and then it would give us like a more clear picture of where commissioners are, and then that will tell us how we can better fill those gaps. And then it's really the board members who have to really do the work in their staff to go out and fill those holes to make sure that we have commissions that are more representative of our community. Well, I would agree and I don't think that I'm unusual in that I know about four or five commissions but Peter but I don't know what I don't have a basis to know what you're talking about when you say, all our commissions are there 1020 and so on and also, again, what's wrong with people having a certain level of ability and education to do some of these very important jobs I don't understand why we should strive to have more people who have an equivalent of high school common and what's wrong with you have to have a bachelor's degree to get most jobs that involve thinking and writing and these jobs to so I don't quite get that but anyway, yes, what are the commissions now that you're talking about. Is there a list. There is a list on the county's webpage. I think there's, I don't know off the top of my head I think there's at least 50 to 75 of them. Okay, I was going to say at least two dozen. Yeah, and then also they're complicated. Some are directly appointed by supervisors that's the majority. Some that are at large that are state mandated like the Mental Health Commission that have some direct appointments some at large appointments. So again, like, you know, maybe we focus more on the at large appointments but again it's working. These are board appointments so it's really these are points that that really should be directed to the board because they're responsible for appointing these. So, but yeah I think we've given a lot of feedback on this. I just had a couple follow up points I think you know there's been a lot of good discussion I think the equality and housing goes a long way towards solving this which I know we're all passionate about. And we're going to continue to make that a priority, but I would also add that like you know, probably beneficial to look at companies that focus on inclusive hiring you know, we have a my company in particular you know we strive for inclusive hiring and and really good. I guess we have a very inclusive company which is great. But I'll tell you like the biggest takeaway that if I could put all of what that means into one little phrase is that inclusive hiring is not passive. It's active. It's finding the younger generation it's training them it's looking to where people would be interested in helping get getting them involved that even like before a commission so like, get them involved in what the commission talks about like, you know, and, and then help train people up to get to positions that they may not be qualified for today. And I think a big part of this that can't be forgotten that the other commissioners have mentioned to his pay, you know a lot of people can't take a day off on a Wednesday to come be in a meeting and then they also probably can't, you know, for the majority of people over time we're getting younger people involved they have kids like someone mentioned so like, let's, you know, let's look at that if that's as you know a serious thing that we want to do is like, let's pay people a wage for the day that they spend or help offset childcare costs you know I think there's a lot of ways that we could like adjust that and that one change would probably get you so much more so many more applicants. That's it, that's all I have. I'm really excited that this is happening and I appreciate the that that we're taking these steps as a community I think it's really important. But on both these topics right I know this is unusual from your, your day to day operations as as a commission, but I think your feedback is still important and noted, and I'll be sharing past this along. So, but at this point I would do want to turn it over to Dave Reed, the director of the Office of Response Recovery and Resilience to talk a little more about the climate action plan. Good morning, Commission chair Gordon and staff. Thanks for the opportunity to give you all an update on where we are on climate action and adaptation plan. Wanted to just give the Commission a high level overview of some of the elements that we have been working on, and we'll be bringing to the board in December. So, as part of the update to the 2013 climate action strategy and the development of this 2022 climate action and adaptation plan. We did an updated greenhouse gas inventory. 2019 was unfortunately the best available data, pre pandemic to give us a representative data set of typical use. Because of the issues with the pandemic the 2020 and 2021 data was not used so this original inventory was created by ambag and then modified by our consultant team. The main takeaway here that I just want to share that most of you already know is that nearly 70% of our greenhouse gas emissions are from the transportation sector. And then nearly 25% is from our built environment, particularly the natural gas and propane elements. One highlights of significance is that we have a very, very low electricity carbon footprint because of the good work that this county did in supporting the creation of 3CE. And their sustained work on reducing the carbon footprint of our electricity. So just wanted to highlight those two things on this inventory side. Next slide please. This graph there's a lot of numbers here but I'm going to try and just distill it down to a couple key points for the Commission and something that has changed as of September. The 2030 reduction target commonly affiliated with SB 32, which is the 40% below 1990 levels. That has been a state law for a number of years. And so what we're what we are showing here is essentially four different lines. The dash line at the top represents what our emissions inventory was in 1990. And that's us, you know, holding that steady across the top there at the little north of 760,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent. The red line represents what's called business as usual if we didn't do anything if we ignored state and federal guidelines, our emissions would follow that trajectory in the red. The orange line represents some of the existing state and federal fuel standard requirements that are going to be coming online over the next few decades. And so it represents some of those actions being taken outside the county at the state and federal level to reduce emissions. Which line was that Dave I'm sorry. That's the orange that's the orange line that says that's in the legend says state and federal actions. So the reason I say that the reason I say that is, is that when or the reason that line is important is that we do expect some emissions reduction efforts to come from those those state and federal legislative requirements. So then that adjusts kind of what we as a county have to do to reduce our emissions to meet to the target of 2030. And then, and then more significantly in September of this year, AB 1279 was passed. And that codified the 2045 carbon neutrality target. So we do now have now have these two targets codified through legislative action at the state level. The 2045 target had been just an executive order. But what we are doing in our cap is setting those two targets as our goal and as our requirement to meet those. And so what we need to do is in what we are doing is trying to create a menu of mitigation strategies. So mitigation being the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to meet those two targets. As an example, the city of Santa Cruz set in the city of Watsonville set intermediate aspirational targets to reach that carbon neutrality sooner. But to give folks a frame of reference, we, we need to reduce our CO2 emissions to meet the 2030 targets by essentially the emissions of the entire city of Watsonville. Watsonville's emissions is right around 180,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent. So we are dealing with a much larger target reduction that we need to meet. So we felt that it's a reasonable goal. And it's going to be a challenging goal to meet that 2030 and 2045 target. Can I ask you a question about the data you're using so I can understand what we're looking at. So when you're, so the yellow line when you said this is taking into account state and federal actions. One important piece of that as the previous slide showed was transportation. So is the move to electric vehicles part of that. And then how was that calculated like how I mean we have kind of a trajectory of people moving to EV. I believe it's going to go much more rapidly in the next decade and then 2030 you're not even going to be able to buy a gas power vehicle in California anymore. So was that taken into account in the yellow line or not my So forgive me I might not have all of the details but it's a great question that I'll make sure to have when when we are before the board and I can certainly follow up with you and the commission on it. Right now, the, I do not believe that the analysis includes the electrification, you know the no new gas powered vehicles sold by 2035. But it includes some of the carb fuel efficiency standards and then title 24 residential building standard information as well so it's those are the two primary data sets that that that support that reduction and you can see it's order of magnitude about 100,000 metric tons so it's it's it's significant but not a ton. And when you think about it over the from 2022 to 2045 it's only 100,000 so it's so it probably it probably doesn't reflect that kind of faster paced vehicle electrification process that we hope to see. Yeah, and I think in our county, you know we punch above our weight a lot of times and move faster than other places with especially with environmental issues. It would be great to kind of project that and take that into account because that could actually be really pretty meaningful in trying to reach our goals. Yeah, and that's in that that will bring up I think on the next slide unless there are other questions on this slide. If there aren't I think the next slide. Peter does touch kind of a little bit on that intent Rachel and so one of the things. Commissioner Dan. One of the things that's unique. One of the things that's unique about indifferent about our climate action and adaptation plan. We completed this or we are going to complete this on a much more accelerated schedule than the cities of Santa Cruz and Watson and the reason we did that is that we want to try and sync up with our operational plan. We want to have a two year cycle where we're we're evaluating implementation objectives, making sure as Peter said in the operational plan that those implementation objectives are smart or smarty objectives, and then pivoting and adjusting we recognize that our strategies will be kind of longer vision aspirational in nature and then the objectives need to have a shorter life cycle, not only to evaluate their effectiveness. And hopefully achieve them faster, but also because we know that state and federal legislation and funding opportunities are changing relatively quickly. And so there may be things that come online that we want to take advantage of and we want to adjust some of our operational objectives. But as I said the key elements are really we need we need to meet those 2030 and 2045 objectives in my opinion. My concern rather is that the state will start to look at how effective communities are reaching those targets not unlike they are at the arena allocation and buildability level. And in my fear is that they will start to take away local control. If we're not making measurable action so I want to be we want to be striving towards meeting those targets as quickly as possible. What we are going to be doing is is diving a little bit deeper into the implementation in 2023 with more specific deeper level analysis of the objectives and making sure that they're measurable and equitable. And the reason we're doing that in 2023 is to support the new board members we didn't want to fully bake the cake. We knew board members had a chance to review those things so we're going to try and sync that up with the operational plan. Adoption and have some of those measurable objectives in place for the board to consider. And then the other big piece is really recognizing, you know, from what we learned from COVID-19 that climate change disproportionately impacts some of our lower income residents renters and marginalized populations and that we need to be considering the impacts of our strategies and objectives on all community members. And so we will be using what we're calling the cap equity guardrails to evaluate our objectives to make sure that we're trying to mitigate those disproportionate impacts. Next slide. So this is a lot of words that just I just wanted to highlight the kind of six things on the left of the slide. We're going to look at these objectives to make sure that they're improving health and safety. We're addressing the financial options, right? If we do existing building electrification ordinances, you know, it's estimated through some of the work of the city of Watsonville that it's around $40,000 to electrify a home. So if we create that requirement, we want to make sure that we have ways to support those folks that that that would be an economic burden to. And obviously that would ideally come from state or federal funding to support that we want to make sure that we align with social and cultural needs and values in our community. That we reduce the potential for displacement with our actions that we continue to invest and engage with our community to make sure as Peter said, and as the discussion unfolded in the prior content, you know that we are representative of the community and that we're from their community, the diverse community voices. And then we also want to recognize opportunities to build more local and accessible green jobs that support our community and how we can do that to both support the emissions mitigation mitigation efforts, the climate change adaptation efforts, and also create local jobs. Next slide. So, this is not foreign to all of you but it was interesting. So I want to just highlight, you know, some of the conversation that we had earlier that the presentation right we talked about reducing vehicle miles travel through higher density, all electric urban housing. We will be hopefully adopting the first electrification ordinance for the county next week, which will be for all new residential construction inside the urban services line. So the housing element obviously can help that that effort and that's the big initiative that all of you know about and we'll be working on, and you'll be hearing about after our presentation today from. Matthew Sundt and and Stephanie Hansen. But obviously the housing element can support the things that chair Gordon mentioned around active transportation multimodal corridors. You know, by building higher density in our urban environment we can support those things that you mentioned. And then, and then obviously the building as I said the building electrification is coming next week. I do want to highlight one thing that is a bit of particular interest to my office in the context of the housing element. And I think it's just to expand on what Commissioner Vialante said. We typically our conversations at the county level around the housing element and the Rena allocations have focused on the affordability requirements and building affordable housing, which is critical in our community. You know, as we all know we've got a deeply racially segregated and socioeconomically segregated and unaffordable community that we live in through the housing and Rena construction. We seek to address that, but I also see the housing element in the in the construction of Rena allocated housing as one of our best tools to affect meaningful change in the climate space. So I want to build that fluency with the community that the housing element and the rezoning of properties to build higher density. All for you know affordable all electric housing in our urban environment is really a climate change effort, not simply an affordability effort, it's both. But I think we so oftentimes as a community gets stuck in the affordability or not in my neighborhood mentalities. And I think we can all agree that we are experiencing climate change now. We're experiencing it through catastrophic winter storm events catastrophic fires or air quality and heat events. It's here now and the construction of higher density in our environment will help that and it speaks to what Renee said in terms of resources. Sorry, Commissioner Shepherd mentioned in terms of resources we do not want to prioritize building in our rural environment. We want to prioritize and optimize the construction of new homes in our urban environment to reduce those vehicle miles traveled support multimodal and transit oriented development and address our active transportation plans. So with that I'll stop and answer the question. That was amazing. Great, great way to put that you just really simplified and like all the benefits of, you know, the housing plan and where we're going so I really appreciated that. I'll let any other commissioners add anything questions or comments I have a few but I don't mind waiting. Maybe maybe not. Please go ahead and start chair Gordon. Okay. I just wanted to say that you know I appreciate this I didn't know if we're going to kind of talk about the similar, like kind of what can we do better that kind of stuff. I would say that like, you know, the greenhouse gas emissions like you mentioned it, some of the ways that I see that are be like really beneficial obviously building denser and corridors and nodes like we talked about. It's amazing how many good effects, housing density and planning, you know, has on the environment and community. And other things like, I don't know what the plan is to get less people on the road, you know that was a huge part of our greenhouse gas emissions. So like, you know, is there like a highway one bus line that can happen, or like bus lanes that like, you know, instead of having two lanes on the road have one that's just a bus lane, and really like promote that or like remove a car lane and one two lane roads and put a full bike lane like a whole lane that's just for bikes and that kind of stuff. Can we promote like the scooter and the bike share, I don't know if that's, you know what that is happening in our county if we're doing that or not. There's a lot of ways. Yeah, go ahead. I was just going to share I mean I think I think director or WCAO Machado can speak at length around the good things that we're doing along with Soquel corridor as well as the highway one corridor with bus on shoulder. So I can, I can let him chime in. I'll be real quick so I'll start with your last question chair the the bike share program for about a year now maybe a little more than your we've been in and contract negotiations to to unveil that and get that out on the street so we're actively working with that and taking a bit of time because we're coordinating with the city of Santa Cruz and see the capital because we're all one community and we want to make sure that we have the same bikes running across those borders and so we're trying to organize that now we hope to have something in place I think it's going to be in the spring time just get ready for summer. With regard to highway one bus on shoulder. Yes, the first phase is going to construction the spring. The next two phases which get us out to to State Park are fully or no the next phase fully funded State Park and then third phase down to freedom. We're pursuing a very large grant to fund that, which will give us bus on shoulder from Soquel Avenue all the way down to freedom that's going to be huge game changer. And then, you know the other highway one component is that the secret document that RTC executed a couple few years ago included a future HOV lane on highway one now that one's not going anywhere yet, but there's certainly potential for a HOV lane on highway one to promote more rideshare. And then I guess lastly Soquel Drive as Dave mentioned, the first phase which is La Fonda to State Park five and a half miles is going is out to bid now. And we'll start construction in the spring, which will get us a improved sidewalks buffer bike lanes, improved bike lanes more bike lanes. And so we're making great strides forward. So I, you know, there's more to talk about there but I know, you know, yeah, you spend all day on it so I'll stop with that. Yeah, no that's awesome. I appreciate hearing that and know about a lot of those things. Miss Hansen. Thank you chair Gordon good morning commissioners just in response to chair Gordon's question I also wanted to remind everybody that the new access and mobility element in this in the sustainability update sets the stage for all kinds of good multimodal improvements, looked at every major roadway signed it status in the layered network so that all modes of transportation could be accommodated and also sets the stage for locating housing. Along those transportation corridors so I just, I wanted to, you know remind everybody that we've set that stage for the for the long term in terms of our policies. Thank you. Awesome. Great. Thank you for that. I just had two other quick thoughts. And, you know, I, I drive often, I have kids I got to get into school you know I work downtown, but I would say that you know for me it's still it's, it's, I kind of have to at some times but then other times I could totally get all the kids on bikes and get downtown you know it was day before Halloween or Halloween whenever there's a big parade downtown, and I had to get past Pacific. And there's a guy who walked by me probably like a bio whole foods. I was in my car he walked by me, and then I was stuck at Pacific and he walked by me again. So, you know, the active discouragement I suppose of driving would solve a lot of problems, it's too easy for me and so maybe if it wasn't as easy like on those days I should have just walked. I would have got there just in the same amount of time. You know so I don't know if we're there as a community yet but I, I could see that being kind of the next phase of this it's not just like helping people with ride sharing that kind of stuff but then my guess is that within the few years it's also like active discouragement, and or like electrified vehicles only like that kind of stuff but you know that might be a future thing I know that's probably a really touchy hot topic so. The other thing I want to chat about is just like, as it relates to housing. The electrified homes gonna be a big deal right as you mentioned that solves a lot of problems I think another challenge we have a lot of our housing is older right and houses are leaky right so the heat that we pumped into all the homes just pumped right out the windows goes right through the roof, if they're not properly insulated and you know now we have these like better building materials where we can really seal up building really nicely and you know better windows systems where they don't leak as much. I would say like if there's easier ways than like whole home electrification is like a really good one but then also, you know, when somebody goes to do new siding on their house maybe they use a better material that seals are building envelope or new roofing material or, you know, maybe there's ways to help people get better windows get rid of single pane windows where the like be might as well not have a window. There's under like building systems to look at that could help in the long run. That's it. Those are all my thoughts. So, yeah, it's a great it's a great point. Chair Gordon and one there's a statistic or a table and the housing element that I'm sure will be in there again this year around the age of our built housing infrastructure and it is remarkable how much of it is 1970s or older. It's a it's a it's a significant percentage. And so home home health, as well as home energy efficiency are compromised with older homes. Yeah, absolutely right. Any other commissioners Mr read to that point. And I know that part of the federal funding that was coming through in the recent inflation reduction act has to do with shoring up those home is that to commission or Dan's point, was that type of population included in that reaction or is that yet to be included in the modeling that the opportunity for people to further insulate their homes to look for that week reduction. So has that yet been included because to commission recordings point. Yes, we have a lot of indoors. We do have a lot of older homes, but that opportunity was included in the inflation reduction act. So it has that calculation of the opportunity and promoting those programs helping people apply for those programs and then obviously take advantage of them has that been included in the modeling or not yet. It's a great point. And so often we think about climate change resilient housing upgrades in the context of home hardening with respect to wildfire risk, but I think the points that you're both making around, you know, building on below improvement is a great one. I used to work for a company called Sustainable Spaces and I would do lower door tests and, you know, basically value and most cost effective ways to make, you know, homes more energy efficient so I'm 100% on board and ecology action and in a couple other nonprofit organizations are in this space doing this work already. And I think obviously we want to try and do more of it for sure. Yeah, I mean I think it's one of those things that especially I think for a lower income people they're not going to fully remodel their home to do. They're not going to tear down a house and rebuild it so they're going to be in April 1970s home and the, I think the burden in some ways is on those with the ability and the time and the resources to help those who don't have those things to be to help them leverage those opportunities and those opportunities exist now. And I just, when we talk about equity, I think it's it's it's I hope to see us as a community help those who wouldn't be able to afford to do installation upgrades on their own because right because it's always the truth is the people who often go after those programs are the people who have the resources to do the upgrades on their own anyway, and they do them because the opportunities there it's it's it gives them the makes it more efficient cost effective wise and really we want to see opportunities of people who would never be able to do it become to do it this way and I just I hope that we we seek out as a community to people who didn't even know it existed or I'd never even have saw it so I just I'm glad to see in some ways it wasn't included in the modeling that means we have an opportunity of reduction to be on it. So, okay, thank you, I appreciate it. Okay, I just want to add as someone who has looked at some of those opportunity, you still have it's still a big outlay of cash even with the federal subsidies and the paperwork is something you do need some kind of degree to fill out. I think in this week I looked at just topping up my installation for my house and it was like $3,500 just add another six inches office stuffs really expensive. And accounting would do well to help people apply for what's out there, but it, it still takes a lot of cashola to do a lot of that stuff. And I also usually want to make my usual presentation that I had the rural part of the county has a minimal bus system. And a lot of people live in rural areas and they are still and probably will for a long way will be dependent on private vehicles because there's no other way to get around, especially when it starts to rain. You know, the street I live on there's no bus service. And there was for a while, but it got cut out. So I mean, I think keeping a lot of these programs in the urban services where they're practical and useful, like Tim is talking about makes sense. And I hope that we will never get to this thing of buying it to all the county because we do have the county is so diverse and it's terrain and where people live and how they live I think we have to be respectful that remember it. I will say that, you know, building electrification isn't isn't being currently for new for existing construction is not before the board, the board is just considering new residential construction at this time. I looked at into getting a heat pump it's 20,000 bucks. Okay, I can get eight back from the feds, but that's still $12,000, you know, a lot of it. And, and I think one of the ways in which we're looking at trying to address that is actually at a regional collaborative scale so so our office in is is trying to collaborate with the county of Monterey and San Benito the city of Santa Cruz and Watsonville. To look at a regional climate approach in terms of seeking some of the funding to do some of this work, so that we are more competitive as a region to get the dollars and that we need. It's north of probably a billion dollars to just electrify every home in Santa Cruz County, not just the jurisdiction but of the unincorporated but the whole county. So that is a staggering amount of money that we don't have so we need those federal dollars and we feel like the most competitive way we can do that is being in our in a regional collaboration. So, great points by everybody for sure. I'll just make one real quick comment and kind of springboarding off of my question earlier today about the electrification of vehicles and that I think going forward with the cap that it's critical to make those projections about transportation since that is over almost 65% of our greenhouse gas emissions and that knowing that we're so rapidly moving towards electrification that taking that into account is important for the decisions we make going forward because you know I don't know that you know in 15 years. Cars are not really the enemy that are electricity from clean sources and the majority of folks are driving a lot of vehicles by then, then we really have to look at cars and in a different way and look to other methods to reduce our impact. Mr. Reed to this I'm completely pivoting here but in any of our reductions, does it include the reduction of like switching now that we do organics, waste diversion and any of that type of thing is that included in the modeling as well since that's obviously changed recently. Yeah, so projections of changing the, the waste management system out and when it was done in the next few years is that included in the modeling as well. Right now what the modeling includes. And one caveat that there's a there's a methodology that has been industry accepted and in my opinion sometimes it doesn't give the local level granularity that I would like to see. We wanted to get a refreshed baseline that was consistent in methodology with the city of Santa Cruz in the city of Watsonville and so we stuck with most of those methodologies the waste stream. Footprint is mostly just looking at the landfill rather than the transportation of waste to the landfill. But to expand a little bit on your question, I do think that there's a carbon sequestration opportunity with our organics stream. And I think as we eliminate the food waste from that organics stream. Or included in our organic stream, there will be, you know, there'll be other potential other opportunities and I know that Deputy CEO Machado is is looking at kind of the waste to energy stream. We're looking at things like pyrolysis and gasification as as resources and then creating things like biochar. And and bag our Association of Monterey Bay Area governments is doing a study to look at natural agricultural and working lands from a carbon sequestration capacity standpoint. So I think we will need to expand the carbon sequestration capacity of our county on behalf of the cities who have very little capacity in that regard but also just to meet those 2045 targets of net neutrality. So I think there's, there's a lot there in the waste stream and a lot more work being done. Well, I think to Ms Dan's point, I think transportation is becoming increasingly electric. I mean, right. I, there are big grid companies that are going electric, there are work with companies that are going electric and so increasingly, not even just in passenger vehicles but in the commercial sphere. So I'm, it's interesting to hear that that wasn't part of the modeling and that's something else so that can change over time. And, you know, and I agree with her that it that I think I hope I should say maybe more than think that it'll be a rapid I agree with her in the passenger vehicles it'll be a rapid adoption but I think even in the commercial sphere to also be a rapid adoption as this technology we've seen quickly, quickly evolve and then I think once it gets to a point where it's commercially accepted the debate will also be rapidly adopted. So thank you for sharing that component not only in the waste stream but also the transportation component of that as well because I agree with Ms Dan that I think the electric vehicle. That is kind of in a multitude of areas so thank you for that. I think there's one hand in the public. Yeah, let's. I had just one other quick question that we should open public comment. Is there any thought of futures this first sustainability as a whole, as it relates to the built environment. Any kind of like incentives for people to track or manage the carbon imprint of their buildings and the buildings that we, you know, create and or you know ability to help people understand even what that means. You know, there is there is a tool that the city of Santa Cruz and currently the city of Watsonville are using around the individual consumption patterns and transportation patterns for folks. Our cap really did focus on the things that we have control over as a county. But I think that there is continued education opportunities for the public to understand both their purchasing patterns and the footprint of those as well as their transportation patterns as well as their home. And I think that one of the initiatives that 3CE is working on in the building electrification space is education and outreach and I think that there was maybe an opportunity there to start to educate folks that shifting to all electric actually can be a utility cost savings over time. Because because the cost of electricity and the efficiency of heat pumps. But I think we need we need to be educating folks about that and then all the other opportunities that you mentioned, chair. Yeah. Great. Awesome. I think education is a big, big part of it so anything we can do to help go help the community. Great. Well, thank you all. Awesome discussion. I think on our, on our study sessions here we do have public comment typically. So let's, let's move to that and strike if we could please open public comment for this. I appreciate it. All right, so if we could get three minutes on the timer. Every member of the public will have three minutes, three minutes to comment. And I ask that you state your name for the record when I call on you. And the first color that we have the hand raised is last four digits to 915 I believe that's Becky. Good morning again please state your name for the record. Can you hear me. Good morning. Thank you. Good morning. This is Becky Stein burner. Before you start my clock. Can you clarify for me. Am I going to be able to comment on only the climate action and adaptation plan or can I comment on other things that have been discussed earlier. Sure anything discussed as part of item seven you can comment on I believe. Right chair, he's nodding. Yeah, please. Okay. Thank you. I will start with the most recent topic. I, I am, I've listened to this presentation at the board supervisors meeting and my concern is that we're using 2019 greenhouse gas emission data. That was pre COVID. But the fact is that transportation patterns have really changed, likely permanently because of the now easily available remote access work from home option that many people have. So I think that needs to be really examined in all of this. I also want to say as a member of the public participating by telephone only, I can't see any of these slides. You're seeing and I would like to request that in advance of meetings like this in work session. The future that all slide presentations be posted on on the website. Thank you for that. Regarding the electrification. I support the cleaner.ology, but is it really cleaner and also does our current counties infrastructure have the ability to support this vast increase in electrification. They have attended some of the three CE meetings and they are not 100% green. They're hoping to be, but they are not and can our infrastructure electrical grid, battery storage, is it really going to be able to handle this. This increase in electrification with vehicles and now I'm hearing homes only construction. I'm happy to hear that it would not be required of rural homes because those of us who live in the rural areas know that we are subject to power outages prolonged sometimes in storms and with PG&E shut off events. I also want to bring to your commission to have it in your mind that when you talk about older homes. They can often be addressing historic homes that should be preserved in their historic context. And so we need to have some ability to help those property owners retrofit things to become more energy efficient. I would just really support this county enact enacting the Mills Act where property owners of historic structures can get property tax reductions for improvements that they do while maintaining the historic preservation of their properties. I support the carbon sequestration and I really think we need to be also looking at for urban reforestation rather than I'm seeing a lot of large buildings being planned. The trees are very small. The dense infill is going to require removing many trees. Thank you Becky of this is the capital road development over 100 trees were cut down and not many are being planted. All right, thank you very much. I have other comments in general regarding the Santa Cruz like me. Great. I'll write them. Thank you. All right. Do we have any additional members of the public wish to speak at this time is so please raise your hand by pressing star nine on your telephone, or raising your hand using the hand icon on zoom. Sorry about my lighting. I am not seeing any chair. I will turn it back over to you. Great. Thank you. Then we can close the public comment portion of agenda item number seven and then bring it back to the commission for any further discussion or questions. And then go from there. I don't have anything I'd like to discuss. Doesn't sound like it. Okay. Well, great. Thank you, Mr. Reed, Mr. dead less and everyone appreciate it. We clear and discussion. Thank you. Also we can close agenda item number seven and then we're about close to two hours in so I think it'd be a good opportunity to grab a 10 minute break. I think it's a good opportunity to get a 10 minute break. I think it works for everybody. And then when we come back, maybe we can fall back to agenda item number five and six really quick can get those votes out of the way. Great. Yes. I'm going to have to leave at noon. Just wanted to say that. Understood. Thank you. All right. So shall we reconvene at 1120. Okay. So commissioner shepherd needs to leave at noon. Can we just go straight into the rain of presentation. And skip past our votes. Take those at the end of the meeting. So that Renee shepherd can hear as much of the housing element presentation as she can. I'm fine with it as long as we have enough people. I can't remember if we're all there. Okay, thank you. See you all at 1120. Right. Welcome back everyone. I think wait till we see. This Drake and then move on. 1122. See, should we take a roll call really quick. Yes, please. All right. Make sure everybody's reconnected. So, But he's muted. Commissioner be a long day. I see you are muted. Okay. All right. Commissioner Dan. Commissioner shepherd. I think I saw it on mute, but we missed your voice there. Mr. Shepherd. Whoops. Yes. I have to turn on three things and I only had two on. Sorry. Chair Gordon. Here. Thank you so much. Okay. Well, let's move on then. We're going to jump ahead to item number eight. Okay. We have Stephanie Hansen assistant director joining us this morning to kick us off. Good morning, Stephanie. Good morning, everyone. Stephanie Hansen assistant director. We are very pleased to be here this morning to share our. Proposed program for the housing element update. As you know. I imagine the housing element update is required to be. The housing elements required to be updated every eight years. The state has aligned this with our recent Rena allocation. Which we've discussed a few times. I'm sorry to interrupt. I think there's some background noise from. You're Mr. Son probably from Matt. You know, I'll take a walk down the hall. Continue, Stephanie. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. And so we have created a program which includes. A lot of public participation and. Addresses the steps that are required. To be addressed by HCD. And. Today, Matthew is going to. Give you a presentation about the program and the schedule. So I'm happy to introduce Matthew's son to you. I don't think you've met him yet. He is our newest policy planner. And he's been tasked with getting this program. Up and running. So with that, I will hand it over to Matthew. Thank you. Mr. Good morning, chair and commissioners, Matthew, and I'm here to present. Planner for. With the community development infrastructure department and more specifically the policy group. And I'm here to present on the sixth cycle housing element update. General plan elements. This graphic lists. The various general plan elements. The housing element is one of eight elements. It's been updated for the last eight years. The fifth cycle. Housing element was approved by the board of supervisors and certified by the California department of housing and community development. In 2016. Several of the elements shown on this slide will be updated in the upcoming sustainability update. Which the board will review at the November meeting. Both the public public safety element and the noise element were added to the housing element update. These and all the other elements are not part of the housing element update. This slide. Shows the fifth cycle housing elements. Six cycle housing element goals that will be relevant to the sixth cycle housing element update. A sixth goal is added here in because it is paramount importance to the sixth cycle. And that's the one highlighted in orange. The goals include providing a range of housing choices, removing barriers to providing housing, preserving housing stock and providing opportunities for special needs and supportive housing. Goal number two is to assist in the development of adequate housing to meet the needs of extremely low, very low, low and moderate income households. A new goal for the sixth cycle is to focus future housing. In areas with high resources. However, the department of the housing and community development does not allow housing to be built in low resource areas. Only if the county will incorporate policies and programs that are designed to remedy existing poverty conditions in low resource areas. So the emphasis is put affordable housing in high resource areas. Avoid the low resource areas, but there's a caveat. So the definition of high resources or high resource areas includes access to transit, schools, jobs, parks and other services that do not require environmental mitigation and where permit street lining or development incentives are available. Here on this graphic are required actions associated with the housing element update. First, the county must review its existing fifth cycle housing inventory. This will require that staff conduct a thorough analysis of the existing 1,000 plus properties included in the fifth cycle housing element. Properties that remain vacant may then be included in the sixth cycle housing element. On the other hand, properties that were developed during the fifth cycle will be evaluated by staff to determine if they are underdeveloped or underutilized and therefore a candidate for inclusion in the sixth cycle housing element. Staff will also identify properties that were overlooked or subsequently subdivided and therefore not included in the fifth cycle housing element, but could be developed and therefore a candidate for the sixth housing cycle and inventory of properties. Housing and community development department requires that only sites with realistic demonstrated potential for development during the planning period be included. Our planning period is 2023 to 2031. The inventory must identify current utility infrastructure and must specify number of units and income level of units that can be accommodated on the property. Excuse me while I pick a sip. As to site eligibility to accommodate affordable housing, County staff must review density of projects on similarly zoned sites at similar affordability levels as indicators of affordable housing potential. With some exception, vacant sites that were identified in two or more previous planning periods and non-vacant sites identified in a previous planning period cannot be carried forward to the sixth cycle housing element unless the sites will be rezoned to allow 20% low-income affordable housing or existing zoning allows my right development for 20% low-income affordable housing. This will put constraints on how much capacity can be attributed to the existing inventory and may force the county to engage in rezoning to accommodate higher densities after the housing element is adopted. The Santa Cruz County RENA allocation. The association of Monterey Bay Area Governments or AMBAG just approve the regional housing needs allocation or RENA plan for our region. The county was assigned a RENA number of 4,634 units in the eight-year planning period. This slide shows a comparison between the fifth and the sixth cycle RENA numbers. Note that the RENA for sixth cycle has increased over three and a half times from the last cycle. As of 2021, 744 units have been permitted under the current RENA, which represents approximately 56% of the required units. So that's the period of 2015 to 2021. We built 744 units. This year will be a decent year for the county in terms of residential building permits. And so this percentage will be improved by the end of the current cycle. Affirmatively furthering fair housing or the AFFH means taking meaningful actions in addition to combating discrimination that overcome patterns of segregation and fosters inclusive communities free from barriers that restrict access to opportunity. This AFFH is new to the sixth cycle. Assessment of fair housing is imperative associated with affirmatively furthering fair housing. The state mandates an assessment of fair housing, which requires an analysis of the relationship between available sites and areas of high or low resources, and concrete policies and programs to affirmatively further the fair housing. The purpose of this assessment is to replace segregated living patterns with integrated and balanced living patterns and to transform racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty into the areas of opportunity. The assessment of fair housing includes a summary of fair housing issues in the jurisdiction and an assessment of the jurisdiction's fair housing enforcement and outreach capacity and an analysis and summary of fair housing issues using available federal, federal state and local data and local knowledge. The analysis must include a variety of factors such as trends and patterns within the locality and in comparison to the broader region. This analysis must address integration and segregation, racially or ethnically concentrated areas of poverty, disparities and access to opportunity including four persons with disabilities and disproportionate housing needs, including displacement risk. Disproportionate housing may include overpayment, overcrowding and housing conditions disproportionately affecting protected classes. Public involvement. As noted, public involvement has to be robust and begin to occur early in the process. Staff is putting together list of potential stakeholders who may have an interest in the development of housing in the county, including nonprofit housing developers, local developers, realtors, funders, farm labor organizations, community-based organizations addressing homelessness or houselessness and county departments. Staff will be using outreach methods developed for sustainability update including an interactive website, public comment portal outreach by a social media, publicized community meetings. It's relevant to note that the Board of Supervisors in their October meeting have requested a particular type of public engagement that reflects, I would say, Santa Cruz like me. And we'll address that as we go through this process today. Sustainability update and climate action and adaption plan. It is important to note that the planning analysis that we are doing this year provides the foundation for the housing element update. Both the sustainability update and the climate action and adaption plan contain policies and strategies that support infill housing, housing options for all in the context of a changing environment. Policy and code changes in the sustainability update that will be particularly useful as we figure out how to accommodate the sixth cycle, the third cycle, the second cycle. The development of the new greener include the following accommodating infill development along transportation quarters and in urban areas with services. Briding the range of densities allowed in our current zoning districts, creating new standards to facilitate smaller lots, raising the percentage of residential development that can be accommodated on mixed use sites, allowing slightly taller buildings to accommodate the need for more housing, et cetera, et cetera. We've established a schedule and we hope to keep to it. We'll begin with assessing the housing inventory and seeing where the gaps are and then move on to the affirmatively furthering fair housing process that includes assessment of fair housing analysis. As noted in the staff report, staff intends to return to the board of supervisors with an update on the new supervisors in January. Environmental review is anticipated to be completed by June of 2023. We'll have stakeholder input beginning later this year, which will continue along with community meetings. We'll present a draft of the housing element to the planning commission, housing advisory commission, and the board of supervisors next summer. First review by HCD, housing community development in Sacramento takes 90 days. The second review will take 60 days by HCD. Certifications anticipated in March of 2024. The board also directed staff to apply for the pro housing designation offered by the housing and community development department in Sacramento, which improves the counties and housing developers chances of receiving funds from housing sources. After the housing element is adopted, the county would work to achieve the pro housing element status and has three years to rezone properties needed to improve the housing inventory and accommodate the arena. And so with that, I conclude and open it up for discussion. Stephanie and I are available for answers. I can go first. Thank you. Please go for it. Thank you. Thank you, Matthew. Nice to meet you. And so at the end there, you went over, I had a question about the timeline and I think that you said that the county has until March 24 to meet this deadline is, was that correct? Did I catch that right? No, it's March 24 is when the HCD will be certifying. So what that means in the schedule, it would, our schedule shows that we would be submitting to HCD, our final adopted version, adopted by the board in December of 2023. And then we ship it to Sacramento and they, I anticipate a March certification. Okay. So the deadline is, so what is the deadline then? So, so we have, I'll highlight the deadlines. The first deadline is getting the secret document completed by June, early summer, late, late April. What I'm asking though is not our internal deadlines and what I'm asking is what is our deadline so that we're not penalized by the state for not having a certified housing element. December 15, 2023 is an official date established by HCD. Okay. And so what happens if the county is unable to meet that deadline? If we are putting in good faith effort to resolve all the issues that Sacramento requires, I think they're going to give us slack in terms of the timing. I think our, our, our staff is ready, willing and able to address all the Sacramento requirements. And I don't anticipate a delay, but for those agencies that are scope laws, for lack of a better term and they're not working well with Sacramento, the threat is number one. That agency would be not on an eight year housing element update cycle. Instead they'd be on two, four year housing element update cycles. Also, and I don't recall the correct terminology, but it has to do with developer rights and the ability to, and Stephanie may chime in on this one. Yeah. Builders remedy. Builders remedy. Thank you very much. Can you explain that for the public? Yeah, it's basically developer can go into the community and build based on what's the code allows run through the process permit process. But they still have to go through sequel. And if they do everything correctly, theoretically, the project is approved automatically. Okay. Thank you. So the state is taking decision making away from the local jurisdiction. Right. And I believe that this is happening in some other jurisdictions right now in Santa Monica. Yeah. I appreciate that. I would just say, I think that we are on a tight timeline for the county. It's, it's an enormous amount to accomplish and a little over a year. And so I hope the state is, is flexible when we're showing due diligence, because there are certain things out of our control. So I consider that to happen. And I think that we've been having been through this before. There were parts of it that were. Contempest and take took time. So my first. Real substantive question is about SP nine. And if that is going to be able to contribute to arena numbers, if there's like going to be an attempt to evaluate properties and be taken into account with our RUNA numbers? Yes, we can account for SB9 units, we can account for ADU units, but the way that we would have to approach it, we'd have to take an example our 2021 ADU units constructed and then forecast what might happen the following years through the 2031 timeline. So we can take that approach with the ADUs as far as SB9, I think there may have been one example in 2021, Stephanie. I believe we just got our first SB9 application in, so maybe it's a delay, but there hasn't been the mad rush, that people had feared. No, but the SB9 will be based on what we've previously gotten in, so it's not, it's more, we have to base it on what we've actually A track record that we don't have, we don't have a track record. We can't do an analysis of potential SB9 properties and say, oh, well, these 3000 properties could be subdivided and therefore provide housing, that's not. You can't take it that way. The state wants us to look at our track record, we have no track record, practically speaking with SB9, it's my understanding we do have a good track record with accessory dwelling units, but we're in a economic period of uncertainty and I don't need to explain anything more than that, but we have to account for that, but dead period, that down period of one year, two years, three years. Yeah, and then the ADUs count as medium moderates, I mean. We typically divide them in our arena between low and moderate based on rents that we find on the market at the time. Okay, and then my last question was about this process in relation to the sustainability plan and the creation of the new RF zone district and the locations in the sustainability plan that are proposed to be zoned to RF and how much, so should those be approved by the boards? How much approximately would that account for for our getting to our meeting arena? Like how many units have we done that calculation? We have done that calculation based on kind of the low range and the high range. I believe it was between about 200 and 400 units. Okay. And those would apply to the six cycle arena. And then so, and then there will be a process for identifying other opportunity sites or yes. Okay, okay, thank you. Commissioner Dan, I wanna commend you on your questions, very succinct to the point and I'm happy to answer them. I wanna emphasize that the state wants the local jurisdictions to exclude properties that were in the fourth cycle and fifth cycle. They were vacant for those many years. The state's approach is that, well, if you can't build on that property during the fourth cycle and the fifth cycle, which is a combination of about 15 years, 12 to 15 years, there's no chance of that property being developed in the sixth cycle. But with the caveat that we can carry that forward anyway, that lot forward into the sixth cycle, as long as we have a requirement that development on that property include 20% affordable housing. Okay, okay, well, that's significant then. Yeah, and also the sixth cycle analysis, the workload associated with sixth cycle update is substantially increased from the fifth. The details and the way we have to analyze everything is completely different from what we experienced during the fifth cycle. Great, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Dan. Any other commissioners like to ask some questions? I can go, I have a couple. First off, thank you for the detail explanation, Matthew, appreciate it. I know this is a huge process and so the details really helpful and I appreciate that. So I had a couple of general questions about like some ideas around what maybe the county's considering and just trying to get a handle on maybe what the process will be and they're kind of not in any order. So I'll just start at the top. Right now affordable housing is kind of like by the applicant, right? We don't have a requirement for affordable housing on a rental project, I don't believe. And so when we went through the sustainability plan update the idea is really like let's use the density bonus to get that affordable housing. And I'm just kind of wondering how that correlates to the idea of the AFFH, I think is really, I'm not sure if that's the right term to use in this scenario, but the idea that like we're trying to place affordable housing in equitable areas. How do you, if we're not saying affordable housing goes in a certain place, like this site that's like close to grocery stores and close to transit and it's like kind of by applicant to put it where they feel makes financial sense, I suppose. How do we marry those two ideas? Well, Stephanie, yeah. Yeah, I could help with that. First of all, Chair, we have to create an inventory of the properties that we are relying on to meet our arena. And that inventory has to categorize them in terms of low, moderate, very low and so forth. So there's a big GIS exercise that needs to go on in the background in order to locate those properties, particularly properties that are in high resource areas and to zone them appropriately for high density or in our case, residential flex. So you're looking at bigger properties, higher zones and located in our higher resource areas and you need to have an inventory that we may not show all of it by parcel number but there's all the background data that goes into that. So that's our job in terms of providing appropriate sites for affordable housing. Okay, got it. So really the idea is like as you increase density in these high resource areas, you're also naturally increasing the amount of affordable housing. That's the goal, right? I think HCD looks at 20 units per acre as kind of a base density for affordable housing and they'll have access to our inventory and we'll be able to say which properties are which and where they're located. Yes, yes. Affordability by design. The higher the density, theoretically the more affordability. Yeah, okay, understood. I wonder if there's some mention in the packet about potentially like updated density bonus and I was just wondering if that was something like, thinking through how this is applied, if maybe there was opportunity for like a higher density bonus in areas that we wanted more affordable housing and as opposed to just the state mandated density bonus and I didn't know if that was something that was being considered or. We haven't gotten that far for that consideration. The state provides for 100% density bonus. For a long time though, I will say that our ordinance exceeded the state's requirements so that is indeed a possibility. Yeah, great. Two more kind of general thoughts here. One is about transportation. There is so much about housing, especially with from the state position that relates to high quality transit corridors, low VMT areas, major transit stops and that's been a consistent challenge in our county to qualify for those. And I believe that there might be some change on that in the near future, but I'm just kind of wondering if the transportation part, like making sure we have those high quality transit corridors and the major transit stops is part of the solution in our housing element as, you know, like there's a lot of state bills that would allow you to do 100% affordable project that could make more financial sense around a major transit stop, but if you don't have any, we can't do those. Chair Gordon, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I'm leaving now, so I thought of that. Oh, sure. Thank you. Renee, did you want to add anything quick before you needed to take off? I apologize. Oh, I just want to play my broken record, one for 30 seconds to say that these vastly increased rena numbers paying no attention if the infrastructure or resources there to support them seems highly irresponsible in part of the state. And I think at a certain point is going to get a certain amount of real feedback from voters who have no idea what's coming. And it seems like they just lay out the state and say, you'll get this many and you'll get that many. And I don't kind of understand if we continue to have a serious drought where all the water's going to come from and maybe it's there, but at least ought to be considered. And if it someday takes an hour and a half to get to Aptos instead of an hour, is that something most people are going to be fine with? And we all don't talk about that. But I think it ought to be talked about just like Tim is saying about, well, do we have well enough developed transit centers to support all these new housing? And I think it's only responsible to provide for people to live comfortably and if we're gonna have a lot more housing fine, but we need to have the infrastructure and resources to support it. And obviously the state doesn't says that is not our fear. We just tell you how much housing you need. I think that's gonna work in at some point. So anyway, I always say this, but I really feel it strongly. And I think a lot of voters are gonna feel it strongly when they get told what these plans are because I don't think most people know about this because it's hard to find out. Most people have no idea what's going on in Sacramento and very little idea what's going on in their own backyard these days, unfortunately, or not fortunately, as case may be. But thank you for allowing me my, I guess 45 seconds and I'll say we'll now get off it. And sorry, I have to go get dental surgery today. Bye. Oh, well, good luck. Thanks. I'm a chair. Yes. I wanna thank Commissioner Garden's comments. And what I'd like to add is the state is requiring the county to not be a hindrance, not to constrain and to create an environment where 4,634 units can be constructed. Whether or not those units are constructed as a whole different matter, but we have to lay the groundwork to accommodate them. If there's water, great. If there's sewage capacity, outstanding. If there's no water and if there's no sewage capacity, then that's obvious that some units, many units, perhaps can't be constructed until water and sewer capacity is constructed. Now, how the state's gonna respond to the jurisdiction that's not providing additional water or not providing additional capacity when perhaps they can, we'll find out in eight years, 10 years, 15, 20 years. Understood. Okay, thank you. Interesting. So is this housing element cycle kind of relating to my other question about transportation also, is this housing element cycle only a planning level, like activity, or is it also kind of incorporating the transportation and the other things like we talked about in the sustainability plan? Well, it's part of the general plan, right? And both your built environment element and the access mobility element address, as I mentioned before, address the connection between land use and particularly housing and transportation corridors. So those remain intact. The housing element is particularly focused on housing and is one piece of the general plan. So those don't go away, they're still at play. Yeah. Okay, great, thank you. But I think my thought is that the high quality transit corridors, low VMT and major transit stops do offer, if we have those, there's a ability to do 100% affordable housing in a form-based density approach, which could up the numbers that would be allowed in those major corridor areas. And so I don't know if you are considering that that would be an important part to get really pushed through. So that we could actually account for more possible units in our affordable housing process. Well, we don't have a form-based code and Planning Commission just recommended updates to the code in the sustainability update. You certainly must recall extreme discussions. Sorry, that's a state density bonus that allows for that. Right. So it's not a local thing, but no. Right, right. So concessions and waivers are a possibility if somebody is utilizing a density bonus, providing affordable units and getting additional density for it. Okay, great. Does any of this housing element deal with process, like county process? I know we talked about that a little bit Peter in the last presentation, but just generally thinking like the process is not just the planning level. You know, it's all the way through to the building completion. And so does this account for how do we make that better, faster, easier, all those things? Or is this strictly like rezoning for 4,600 units? It's a policy document and has programs just like the rest of the general plan. Certainly programs should encourage streamlining where at all possible. So I think it would be addressed in the housing element. And as Matthew alluded to in the presentation, part of our job is to get, you know, set the stage and then get out of the way so that projects can move forward in an expedited manner. There's one element here that we address kind of at the very end, but the board has directed that we apply for pro housing designation. And as we're doing our housing element, assess our programs for any gaps or needed programs in order to gain that pro housing designation. That designation helps us achieve higher scores in competitive grants. And so that once we get the housing element, our intent is to, we know where the gaps are, our intent is to try to address them at the policy level in the housing element update, make any needed changes and then try to attain that pro housing designation. So that does become part of implementation and a lot of those programs are really aimed at streamlining and opening the doors where they might not be open at this time. Okay, great, thank you for answering my questions. I appreciate it. Commissioner Villalante, did you have anything you'd like to add? Just a few comments. I was giving Commissioner Shepard a chance since I knew she had to leave it noon. Thank you, Mr. Senator, for your presentation. I know this is gonna be a huge lift for the planning department, as Commissioner Dan mentioned. I know it says to 2024, but really it's a very short timeline to get everything done and to have it submitted by the end of 2023. And to Commissioner Shepard's point, I think that the public, I think there's been talking, the county is under a lot of effort to kind of talk about the fact that the rena numbers are much, much larger than we've seen in the past and what that's gonna mean for the community. And this commission and this body has done a lot of work in order to do the sustainability update. And it's now we're gonna go before the board in order to make it, obviously easier, but a little more streamlined or to put the tools in place so that housing can actually get built. And yet I still think that the public is gonna be surprised, quite honestly, throughout the process of what that really means in order to build that housing. And so I don't doubt that the planning department will do a good job of doing that outreach. I just think that it's one of those things where the burden is always on us to just try even more to keep the public informed. And I know you guys will do a good job. I know you guys did a wonderful job, huge heavy left in the hands of the sustainability update as we move forward on this. And so I just wanna thank you for your presentation. I know that this will be a lot of work on the back end. I don't have any questions at this time, just since this is just kind of a beginning steps of what is gonna be a lot of work. I know not only your team, but I know GIS is not here today, but they do a lot of effort when it comes to these things. And Mr. Price and his team are a wonderful asset for the county as you guys move their work forwards. That's all I have to say. So thank you both. Yes. I have been engaged with Mr. Price and the GIS team already to get some background information on our fourth cycle and our fifth cycle. And I say fourth cycle and fifth cycle because the state says in the two previous cycles, a vacant lot is a red flag. So our numbers right now, and I'm not finished with it, our numbers right now indicate 458 lots in 2015 inventory were vacant in the fourth cycle as well. Yeah, the last two cycles, as I'm sure you know, were difficult to move with their two different types of processions, the three and then the pandemic and so and we saw construction projects begin and end. And so it'll be a challenge. It's interesting to hear the fact that if they were vacant, we can only account them with the 20% affordable. So I look forward to seeing what comes of the work you guys are doing. And through this process with GIS, they've identified the fourth and fifth cycle vacant lots. But now we have to identify those vacant lots in the fifth cycle. How many of those have been developed since 2015? So I'm anticipating that 458 number is gonna drop, which is good news. Houses were built. Great. Well, then if, if ever all the commissioners are done questions, we can open a public comment at this time. Mr. Gregory. Hi. Hi. Can you help us start public comment portion of this? Sure. All right. So I will, I will remind attendees to either raise your hand by pressing star nine on your telephone or raising your hand, using the hand icon on your zoom link. And I see a hand raised. Looks like it's Becky. If we can get three minutes on the clock, I will call on caller 2915. Good afternoon. I guess at this point, please state your name for the record. You have three minutes. Hello, thank you. This is Becky Steinburner. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi. Thank you. I would like to welcome and thank Mr. Sund for his report and his very good presentation this morning. Thank you. And I also want to commend commissioner shepherd for again, bringing to the forefront. These numbers are all well and good, but if we don't have the infrastructure. Excuse me to support them. How can we have a livable community? So in fact, this very thing came up at the Santa Cruz city water council or water commission Monday night when they prepared to go to the city council. That will be November 29th to present what Santa Cruz city plans to do to provide water for the area. And they actually suggested that there be a presentation to you. So I hope that they do come and that staff will reach out to the Santa Cruz city water department. Also, we, we have not talked much about the sewage. I know that live oak often gets targeted for a lot of this dense infill. What I am seeing is that most of what the county is proposing in the general plan rezoning is in pleasure point. But in the Rodale Gulch basin, there is a sewer moratorium currently. How can we address that issue with these numbers coming in and accommodate the very large Kaiser medical facility that is also probably going to go in there. We also need to consider when we talk about putting the dense infill along transportation corridors, we must include the rail corridor because there will be and must be something to use that valuable corridor for some sort of public transportation. So I hope that that will also be considered. I would like to point out to your commission that recently at a county board of supervisor meeting, tiny homes on wheels will be allowed to be counted in the Rena numbers. And that's a complex issue because they are on wheels and they could move. But your commission also needs to be made aware of that. And I hope Mr. Sons will talk about that a bit. As the also the rather novel way that the board suggested these changes be made to further public outreach by using something that I've heard called a wisdom council, but it's a random group of people that get together and they come up with solutions and public outreach methods. Regarding public outreach, I think the most effective is something very physical that people see to that end. I request again that this county adopt a flagging and staking ordinance similar to what Monterey County has done that is required when an application is first considered. My final, I think my final question is affordable by design usually means very small units. What will we do for the families? How will we give provide affordable housing for families? That's not going to work in a 400 square foot home. That is affordable by design. And my final question is will the unmet Rena numbers in the housing element from unbuilt units be rolled over to be added on to the six cycle numbers? And thank you again, Mr. Sun. I really appreciate your good presentation and your good staff report available for the public today. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. And do we have any additional members of the public who wish to speak at this time? So please raise your hand. I am not seeing any chairs. So I will turn it back over to you. Great. Thank you. Then we can close the public comment portion of agenda item number eight and bring it back to any commissioners have any further discussion on this item. Before we close it out and move on to our previous items that we moved past. Nothing. Okay. Great. All right. Well, thank you, everyone. Thank you. Ms. Hansen and Mr. Sun. Appreciate the. Great discussion and presentation. Looking forward to seeing this move forward. Cool. With that, we can close agenda item number eight. We're going to bounce back up to number five. Consent agenda items again, AB 361 is the only thing on the consent agenda. And I believe we had a motion and a second already. So we could just move to a vote. Please. Okay. Commissioner Shepherd is gone. Commissioner Dan. Yes. And Commissioner Villalante. Yes. And Chair Gordon. Yes. Great. Thank you. That passes. And then we can move on to schedule item number six, approval of minutes as number 28, it's 2022 planning commission meeting. What a commissioner like to make a motion on that. I'll move approval. Thank you. And a second. Thank you. Commissioner Villalante and Dan. Ms. straight. Can we do a vote on this also, please? Okay. Commissioner Villalante. Yes. And commissioner Dan. Yes. And chair Gordon. Yes. Great. Thank you. That motion passes. And we can close that item. Move on to agenda number nine. Planning director's report. Do you have a report today? Thank you, chair. No real report. Just to let the commission know that we are planning to go to the board of supervisors next Tuesday. To start the process of final review and hopefully approval of the sustainability update and all its associated amendments and secret documents. So let me know we're on schedule there. And we hope to have it wrapped up by the end of December. So that's all I wanted to report today. Thank you. Yes. Awesome. Good luck. I know it's been a long, long path to get here. So hope it goes well. Great. So then we can close that move on to agenda item number 10 report and upcoming meeting dates and agendas. Do we have any report on those? Ms. Drake. Yes. So we will not be having a meeting on November 23rd. And so the next regularly scheduled meeting date is December. 14. And I wanted to check in with the planning commission because we actually have a rather large agenda that might be shaping up for that, that hearing date. And I probably will follow up with an email poll once I have all of the agenda items. I don't know if it's a good idea to do that. I don't want to nail down, but we may, I may be checking in with you to see if you would prefer to do one very long meeting. Probably an all day meeting. Or if you'd like to look at scheduling a special and meeting date. To. To take care of some of the items. The next meeting after the December 14th meeting is December 28th. And I just wanted to get that on your radar. We are affirming up that agenda now and I'll reach out to the planning commission when I have a better idea, but I just wanted to get the wheels turning on that. It's always a challenge when we have a lot of projects ready for hearing in December, which is what's happening. Which is unusual. Is it a large volume of projects or one? It's the medical office building project is looking like it may make that agenda date, which I think is going to be a very long meeting. Item. And then we actually have four other projects that are also scheduled for that meeting date already. And that includes a land division. Complicated. Rezone lot line adjustment. And at least one other item. That is a coastal permit. So. Hard for me to totally gauge how, how long each one of those hearing items would take. I would say probably half hour to 45 minutes for those three or four items. And then plus the medical office building. So I think we could get it done in a day. Hopefully. But I wanted to just check in with you all about that. And be all followed by email. I haven't had a lot of success with reaching out by email. I'll just say, you know, if I email. Email you all with some questions, just get back to us so that we can get the agenda sorted out. So that's, that's, that's December. And then in January, we had a meeting. We had a meeting. We had a meeting. And I was listening to the discussion earlier. I just wanted to, to just reiterate that we are planning on bringing. Back if we can, or introduce an, I guess. A call in the future for members of the public. And that should hopefully. Help us with public participation in the meetings to have that conversation. I think we're starting next year, but we are, our goal is to have all of the commissioners in the chambers for the meeting. So not a hybrid. You know, quorum, but everyone, everyone from staff and from the planning commission in the chambers and then have the call in feature or, you know, in person feature for the members of the public. That's what we're putting together right now for the January. And then we're going to have a meeting. And then we're going to have a meeting. And then we're going to have a meeting and timeframe and hopefully COVID. Is not an issue. Yeah. Great. Well, on schedule really quick. I will look for email and try to respond right away. Apologies if I am not the fastest on emails. And I, my initial vote would be for a longer day. I may or may not be around on the 28th. So that would, that's just my gut reaction. I can check into the morning. Okay. Thank you. I'm sure staff would prefer to not. Have a meeting on the 28th. We definitely cannot do the medical office building on that date. It would be the other items, which would be hard to coordinate multiple items. On a different date with, with staff being that week. Okay. Great. Thank you. Okay. Great. Then last item on the agenda is County Council's report. Do we have a report today? Justin. I see Justin is on, but. I'm guessing he does not have a report. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thanks. Justin. All right. Well, thank you everyone. I appreciate that. With that, we can conclude the hearing today and looking forward to seeing everyone on the 14th. Thank you very much, everyone. All right. See you.