 All right, good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us for today's Planning Commission hearing. Today's date is March 10th, 2021 and the time is 9.30 a.m. Today's hearing is completely remote. We are using a Zoom video conferencing meeting platform today. For you at home or viewing this hearing, who may wish to participate in this hearing, I wanted to take a moment to explain the technological pieces of this remote hearing. So to participate in the hearing, you may connect with us via the Zoom video conference link, which is posted on the Planning Department's homepage at sccoplanning.com. The meeting link is also provided here on this slide. Alternatively, you may participate in today's meeting by phone. Please dial 1-669-900-6833. When prompted, enter collaboration code 810-0864-8359. If you wish to simply view today's meeting, it is being broadcast live on television on Channel 25. For more information, please visit the Community Television website. A couple of instructions about participating in today's meeting. You will be muted by our support staff until you are called on to speak. Following each public hearing item, time will be provided for speakers to contribute their testimony. When the public hearing is opened, any member of the public may wish to provide comment. To provide comment, I will ask participants who wish to provide testimony via the Zoom link on their computer to remotely raise their hand. This will indicate to us that you wish to comment. When we 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. Members of the public will be provided three minutes to speak. For participants who wish to provide testimony via phone, when the public hearing is open for the item you wish to provide testimony on, please remotely raise your hand by pressing star nine on your telephone. I will call on callers by either their name or the last four digits of their phone number. When you're called on to speak, you must unmute yourself by pressing star six on your telephone. If at any time you have difficulty connecting to today's meeting via the Zoom link or by calling in via telephone, please email myself, Jocelyn Drake, at Jocelyn.J-O-C-E-L-Y-N dot Drake, D-R-A-K-E at Santa Cruz County dot U-S. I'll check my email periodically throughout the meeting to make sure that you're available and I'm able to participate. Okay, so after providing these instructions, I would like to turn it over to the Planning Commission Chair, Judith Lazenby. Good morning, Judith. Good morning, and good morning all. Welcome to the March 10th, 2021 virtual meeting of the Santa Cruz County Planning Commission. I will call this meeting to order. The time is now 9.33. Ms. Drake, may we have a roll call, please? Yes, Commissioner Gordon. Commissioner Schaefer-Fredes. Oh, she's out today. Commissioner Shepard. Commissioner Shepard, I believe you're muted. Hello, sorry. Here, Commissioner Dan. Here. And Chair Lazenby. Here, are there any additions or corrections to today's agenda? Yes, there is one correction chair, which is in your Planning Commission pocket. Item number seven, as reflected on the Planning Commission agenda, is numbered as number eight on the staff report. And I would like to make the correction that the item, which is the public hearing to consider the general plan annual report is indeed item number seven on your agenda. Okay, thank you. Does anyone have any ex parte communications that they need to declare? I do. I had a phone conversation with two constituents who were concerned about the Felt and Quarry application and that was about two weeks ago. Thank you, Commissioner Gordon. I've also had people reach out to me about. I can't hear you. I've had additional constituents reach out to me as well about that item. Okay. Not hearing any others. Oh, could, Commissioner Gordon, could you turn up your sound just a little bit more? I still couldn't hear you. Thank you. Okay. Okay, at this time, the Planning Commission will hear brief two minute maximum statements from participants regarding any issues of concern that are not on today's agenda. Okay. So chair, I will go to our list of participants. Are there any members of the public who wish to speak on an item that is not on today's agenda? I am seeing one hand raised. Last four digits, two, nine, one, five. Good morning. Will you please state your name for the record? And you must unmute yourself by pressing star six. Thank you. This is Becky Steinbruner in the Aptos Hills. Can you hear me? Yes, good morning, Becky. Thank you. Good morning to you all. And thank you for your good service to the people in our county. I want to make a request quickly that the access information for these meetings be put directly on the head of the agenda. Right now, I have to go to a number of places to find it and putting it right on the agenda as the Board of Supervisors has now begun to do is very, very helpful for the public. I want to just say a little bit about the wireless study but that happened workshop last meeting. But can I speak about that during the approval of the minutes and where are the minutes? The minutes were part of the agenda packet. Okay. And I don't know if you've got the full packet or not, did you? No, it is not available online. Well, I'll continue on, but just know that there is no way for the public to see the minutes coming up. I would like to speak about something that happened last meeting. So moving on to what is not on your agenda today, I would like to speak about is the State Board of Forestry's rulemaking that is in progress now. I hope that you are all watching that because it will potentially significantly and inadvertently affect our County, especially the rebuild areas. It will create new and very expensive requirements for road, paved road, paved widths in areas where Ms. Payah Levine has testified before the Board, there are areas in the County that will not be able to meet those requirements. So I hope you're watching the Board of Forestry. The last thing that I will say is about the high level of PCE contamination at the affordable housing unit project on 1500 Capitola Road. There's very high levels of contamination there. And I'm very concerned that those residents will be breathing that volatile carcinogen and the mitigation is only to put a vapor intrusion monitoring system under the slab. But if the power goes out, if things don't work well, these people are in harm's way. And I urge you to recommend to the Board that that site be cleaned up. There are some tests going on and they have determined that the source is the old dry cleaner where the laundromat is now. That needs to be cleaned up before these people are asked. Thank you, Becky. Okay, we'll go back to our list of attendees. Are there any other members of the public who wish to speak on an issue that is not on today's agenda? And if so, will you please raise your hand by pressing star nine. Chair, I am not seeing any. So I'll turn it back over to you. Okay, thank you. Item number five, it's the approval of the minutes of February 24th, 2021, the Planning Commission. Approval. Is there a second? I'll second it. Thank you. All in favor say aye. Any opposed? And I will abstain. All right, and Commissioner Shepard, you are muted. Okay, sorry. Do you approve? Are you approving the minutes, Commissioner Shepard? I am approving the minutes and I finally have struggled my microphone to the ground. Okay, thank you very much. That brings us to the continued items. Item number six, which is the Felton Quarry permit request is Mr. Carlson on the meeting. He is, and... Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, are we? All right, we hear you. Good morning, David. It unmuted and it bumped me off and then it brought me back. I'm sorry, that was me. No problem. The recommendation on this item is to continue it to April 14th. And so I do not have any staff presentation for today. The status of the project is as described in the letter that's on your agenda. And I have a question. Were the attendees at any one of the community meetings advised of this request to continue to April 14th? I sat in on the community meeting and I do believe I recall it being brought up during the meeting that this item would be continued to April 14th. Okay, is there any way we can determine if there are participants online this morning that would came to testify for or against this item? Chair, I am seeing what appears to be a couple of callers who wish to speak on this item. Well, I suppose it would be up to our panel. What do the other commissioners think we ought to do? Well, I think that we should try to hear from the public if there are people from the public. So open a public hearing opportunity for people to speak. And then I'm ready to make a motion to continue the item to the 14th as recommended. I appreciate that. Thank you. If there's just a few, fine, but sometimes it doesn't really help if people feel like they've said what they wanna say and then they feel obligated to come back a month later and say the same thing again. I mean, it's up to them. I mean, I wouldn't wanna hear a full testimony without a staff report at all. I guess I would suggest, do we know how many members of the public are waiting to speak on this? It looks like a very short list. It might only be one person, maybe two or three unless people join, that's what I'm seeing right now. So it doesn't look like nearly the level of participation that we had at the last hearing. So I think it would just take a few minutes. Okay. That would be, oh, sorry, go ahead, Chair. Do we have the applicant available? So I would just make a suggestion that we don't hear presentations and that I would also make a suggestion that because we're continuing it, maybe we limit public comment to no more than two minutes because we'll be hearing this in full as proposed at least on the 14th. I would support that idea because we're gonna hear the whole thing with the staff report and the results of the community meeting on the 14th. I believe our timer is automatically set at three minutes. So I'm not sure if we can change the timer to two. So when the alarm goes off, that says you have one minute going or left, then we could terminate the presentation. It worked. Thank you, support staff. We were able to switch that over. Okay, great. That sounds good. Okay. I will, without the staff report, I would go ahead and open the, I don't suppose any commissioners have questions of staff at this point. I only wanna say, David, when we do get, come back for this, if you can give a report as much as you can on what went on at the community meeting, that's always very helpful. Yes, and especially any offers to mitigate. So on item number six, I will go ahead and open the public hearing. And if the applicant wants to say anything, you would have two minutes, just like anyone else, I guess. And that would be Don Roland. Are you available? He is with us today. Did you wish to speak from this? Don, if you wish to speak, he does have his hand raised. So we can start with Don. Would you like? Okay. Okay. Good morning. Good morning. This is Don. I'm happy to listen in. We had a community engagement meeting recently. Be happy to answer any questions from the commission. But I don't have anything to present today. We're continuing to get a lot of public input, which I'm compiling and be happy to review on the meeting on the 14th. Thank you. So you are available for questions this morning. Yes. Okay, Ms. Drake. Okay. All right. So at this time, I will go to any members of the public who wish to make a comment on this project, which is a recommendation to continue the granite instruction company mining approval. And I am seen a caller with the last four digits, 2915. Good morning. Will you please state your name for the record? Good morning. This is Becky Steinbruner from Aptos Hills. Can you hear me? We can. Good morning again. Thank you. Good morning again. I pressed star nine many, many times when you were approving the minutes and was not called upon to be unmuted. Again, I wanna say that the minutes are not available to the public. And there was something that I said, I wanted to speak about that. So I will send it to you in writing. But again, this is a very difficult system for public access. And I just wanna make that clear for the record. Regarding this application, I'm glad it's being delayed before your commission until April 14th. I thought Chairman Laysenby's question was very poignant where people notified about the delay today. And it was with some hesitancy, the planner said he thought it was mentioned during the meeting. I wanna propose to your commission and to the planner, this is such a huge project with a lot of impacts on the public. And a lot of people watching it and concerned, would you please make an electronic signup list to get automatic notifications of anything to do with this project? It's, I think, a relatively simple thing to do for your IT wizards and would improve the level of notification to the public and public education on this project. I wonder how the county and the applicant do plan to notice the upcoming hearings that are referenced in the staff report. And again, I urge you, more notification is better than less. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Drake, could you speak to that briefly on the notification of the project? I would check in with David. Typically when we continue to a date certain, which we're doing today, we do not send a new public notification. I don't know if David has any other plans about noticing outside of the norm. So we should probably check in with him. Yes, well, I'll just note that the staff report for this item that any member of the public can click on and read on the agenda for this hearing informs them that the item is recommended to be continued to April 14th. I do also understand that Granite Construction continues their outreach and may even have another community meeting in which it can also be announced at that meeting. But Jocelyn's right, our typical process is that the motion from the first hearing on this continue to a date certain that does not require any, that does not automatically trigger any additional public notice because it was continued to a date certain. And then the staff report for this item continues it to a date certain. So anybody following this item would be able to follow that trail. So does Granite have, yes, go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna add, this project affects a lot of folks in our district and I just wanted to assure the public that we've been in close contact with a lot of community members and opinion leaders and people who are organized about this who have asked questions and so that's another source of information. Do you know, Commissioner Dan if the city public works, do you wanna to meet? You know, that was part of the motion when we heard it and there's, I think it was referenced in our letter but I don't have any further information on those conversations. The applicant could, if they want provide an update that I can tell you that the grant of construction did do a presentation before the city transportation and public works commission shortly after the last hearing and I intend to be in touch with the public works director to invite them to participate in whatever way they choose in the April 14th hearing. And I also suggest that maybe we could get through the public comment and then we can ask our questions. It's just a quick question. Thank you, back to you, Ms. Drake. Any other hands raised? So I'm going back to the members of the public again if you would like to speak on this item please raise your hand by pressing star nine on your telephone or remotely raise your hand on the Zoom link. And actually I'm not seeing any other members of the public raising their hand to chair. Oh, actually, oops, sorry, one just came up. All right, and I don't see the phone number so I'm seeing a name which is no Chisholm. Good morning, will you please state your name for the record? Yes, Jeffrey Nolkinson. Thank you, good morning. Yes, morning. Thanks for the opportunity to speak. I don't know if I'm going to be affording anything of no tear this morning. I'm late understanding what this is really all about. I missed the first community engagement meeting as the letter reached me days later after the meeting. So I was not able to attend. I'm lacking the true understanding nature of what the impact is for the community by this quality expansion. And I'd like to know if April 14th or certainly back up is the staff report going to educate me to where I need to be to the level I need to be to be able to get into that April 14th meeting and speak knowledgably about what's going on. Could you speak to that, Mr. Carlson? The staff report that will be online before the April 14th meeting, would that be an updated staff report? That will be an updated staff report but I can refer you to the staff report that is already online on the February 24th planning commission agenda item for this item. You can click on that. That's the full staff report that will give you the complete information on the project that was presented at the first hearing. So you can go back and read that to bring yourself up to date and then there will be additional information presented on this in the staff report for April 14th. The new 24th staff report. Which staff is that? If you go to the county planning department website and navigate to the planning commission agendas and then navigate to the agenda for April 24th, I believe it was item seven and you can click, there's a link right in the agenda under the item that will allow you to bring up the full staff report. And if you'd like to email David or I, we can help you navigate to the staff report as well outside of this meeting. Anybody who's listening, including the caller. Anyone else available to speak? All right, I'm going back to the list of callers. Just wanted to remind everyone on the line if you would like to speak please raise your hand by pressing star nine or remotely raising your hand. All right, chair, I am not seeing any. If there are no more participants then I will close the public meeting and bring it back to the commission. I will move the staff recommendation that this item be continued to April 14th. Is there a second? I'll second it. Thank you. All in favor of the continuance. Aye. Yes. Great. Thank you. Chair, can I ask one further question on that? Yes. Hopefully you can hear me a little better now. I just wanted to understand if there's going to be another community meeting or are they all done? I was a little unclear on that. Mr. Carlson. I think so. I would defer to the applicant to answer that question. Okay. And the applicant is raising his hand. Would you like him to answer that question? Yes. Okay. Yes. Mr. Roland. Yes, thank you for the question. We did have one meeting already and we purposely tried to hold it at the same time a day as this meeting thinking that we would reach the most number of potential participants. However, I did receive some feedback during that meeting then also subsequently via phone calls and emails asking if we might consider having another meeting at a different time of day. And so we're taking that under advisement. Right now we're sorting through all the feedback that we're getting and trying to determine our best path forward. And so my expectation is while I don't have a date to share with you right now my expectation would be that we would have a second community engagement meeting that would be at a different time of day to allow people who were not able to attend the first. Will you be posting information on your website? I trust that you can still hear me. Yes, when we have that date we will update it on a project specific website that I've shared with the mailing list that was provided to us by county planning staff. So we sent out and I personally participated in the stuffing of over 700 invitations that were mailed out. And so we would do the same notification to that group as well as update our website with that information. May I ask a question? Yes. I would appreciate it if you would let us commissioners know when the meeting scheduled because we've been hearing from people reasonably often via email. So it'd be nice if we can useful if we can tell them and make sure Dave knows obviously. And I think another I'd like to agree that another meeting will be appropriate and much appreciated. And I think a great benefit because it's always the case that people feel they didn't hear like the meeting or they didn't get the notice, et cetera. I know that a lot of people in my district got a notice but it was only two days before the meeting. So I think having sec meetings a good idea. I don't know if you're planning to think about having it at maybe six or seven PM because even during lockdown, a lot of people still have work obligations during the day but I will leave you to sell that. But yes, make sure everybody knows so we don't hear as we often unfortunately do. I never heard about that. No one told me. Whatever you can do to avoid that will be at everybody's benefit. Agreed. Thank you. So are we ready to move on to item number seven? The public hearing to consider the general plan annual report. Here we go. That is Natisha Williams. So let's see if we can, just a moment. I see her name. Yep. I think we're promoting her right now. All right. Good morning, Natisha. Good morning, commissioners. Good morning, Jocelyn. So everyone can hear me just fine? Yes. Great. Yes. Let's get started. So my name is Natisha Williams and I'm here today to present the 2020 general plan annual report. State law and county code require that each year we prepare a general plan report and housing element annual progress report or APR for public hearing and review by the planning commission and the board of supervisors. This report is submitted by April 1st of each year to the governor's office of planning research in the state department of housing and community development. A general plan annual report summarizes the number and status of general plan amendments processed in 2020. The status of major programs in the general plan such as commercial agricultural land classification reviews park site acquisitions and changes to the urban services line, as well as potential future general plan amendments and updates. The general plan annual report also includes the housing element annual progress report which presents data and information on the county's progress in meeting our share of regional housing needs as well as housing element programs and uses spreadsheets formed by HCD. So if you can move to the next slide. Thank you. The board approved three general plan amendments in 2020 related to the second part of the updates to the safety and hazard protection policies including updated air quality policies and addressing climate change hazards and environmental justice. There was also an amendment for the permanent room housing combining district which included modifications proposed by the coastal commission and as well as the public facility, school employee and farm worker housing amendments facilitating a variety of workforce housing projects. General plan amendments that are currently in progress include the sustainability policy and regulatory update which includes revisions to several elements of the general plan as well as code modernization that will incorporate sustainability principles articulated in the vision of the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan. The medical office building proposed on SoCal Avenue in Live Oak also requires the general plan amendment and view zone to allow professional and administrative office uses and this project is currently in the environmental review process. Oh, it looks like we're on the wrong slide. We can go back to slide three. One more. Thank you. The housing element annual progress support is included in the general plan annual report and the section summarizes applications and permits for net new housing units in 2020 and data tables provided by the state. In your packet we've included table B, table D, summary tables and all in the original forms provided by HCD. Overall progress in meeting our regional housing needs allocation or arena is summarized in table B. 142 units were issued building permits in 2020 and applied towards arena. Information on the status and progress of the housing element program and policy implementation intended to meet our housing goals is summarized in table D and the summary tables included information on applications received during the calendar year 2020. The county received 84 housing applications proposing a total of 106 units. Approximately 85% of the applications were still in process at the end of 2020 and are expected to be approved in 2021. Some of the state reporting forms are not included as attachments to the report but will still be submitted to HCD and OPR and this includes table A, which includes housing development applications submitted in 2020. Table A2, which includes all housing permits approved in 2020 and these tables are just very detailed and large and difficult to reproduce as attachments to this report. But some of the information we've provided to you in these table B and the summary tables included in your packet. In addition, several of the tables are not applicable to the county this year so we've not included them. Next slide. So we're gonna take a little bit of a closer look at table B. Table B places these 142 new housing units that were issued building permits in 2020 into affordability categories to demonstrate the county's progress in meeting the allocated share of regional housing need. Under California law, all local governments are required to adequately plan to meet the housing needs of everyone in the community. Our housing element must ensure that land is zoned and available to accommodate our share of the projected regional housing need. AMBAG develops the RENA for this area and the current RENA plan for the Monterey Bay region was adopted in June of 2014. It allocates a total goal of 1,314 new housing units to the unincorporated area of the county for the nine year planning period starting in January 1st, 2014 and ending December 31st, 2023. These units are distributed between four income categories very low, low, moderate, and above income, above moderate income. Denver's County completed its seventh year of the RENA cycle in 2020. Within the first seven years of this nine year planning period, the county has permitted a total of 645 units. These units were issued at the following affordability levels. We have 72 very low, 85 low, 250 moderate and 238 above moderate income. The total of 679 units remain for this RENA cycle. As shown in this table, the 122 new units that apply towards RENA for the RENA cycle for the year 2020, we're nearly double the number of units from the year before. So at 64 of these units, we're just under half of all the units of County towards RENA last year were PRH units. So we're gonna take a look into the PRH units if you can go to the next slide. Thank you. In 2020, the County approved the PRH combining district to recognize the conversion of obsolete visitor accommodations to housing units that are considered affordable by design, meaning that due to their small size, lower than average rents may generally be charged. Usually jurisdictions count new issued building permits towards meeting the RENA, but we're also allowed to count adaptive reuse units towards the RENA, which are permitted units that are now considered housing units or were not considered housing units when they were originally created. PRH units are recorded in the Housing Element APR as new adaptive reuse housing units and apply towards our progress in meeting the regional housing needs allocation. The table shown details eight PRH projects that were approved in 2020. Of the 64 total units created, 61 are estimated to be affordable ranging from very low to moderate income affordability levels. And this estimation was actually based on a lot of projects, the projects were required to give us rent prices. So we were able to determine their affordabilities with those rent prices that they gave us. As you can see the PRH units approved last year have made a substantial contribution to the County's RENA. And next slide. Following this review of the 2020 general plan annual report, staff recommends that your commission conduct a public hearing on the 2020 general plan annual report and recommend that the Board of Supervisors hold a public hearing and direct staff to file the report with the State Department of Housing and Community Development. This concludes our presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Chair, I have a couple of questions. Yes, Commissioner Dan. Thank you for the report. Just looking at table B, so I understand that our PRH units have counted towards, is that the 29 from 2020 that are non-dead restricted but in the very low income category? Yes, all of those are PRH units. Okay. And then, so I guess what are the other examples in other years of the non-dead restricted like in the 15 from 2018? Right, in previous years and also in this year as well, all of the non-dead restricted units are smaller, they're primarily smaller ADUs under like 400, 500 square feet. And what we do is a price comparison of units in the area and determine their affordability is based on that. Okay, yeah, that was my question whether there was a definition of ADUs being low income by design, by nature of their design. And so we have some sort of threshold for that that is used. Right, so primarily these are day ADUs and smaller ADUs and we don't just have a blanket sort of definition it's just we determine it based on looking at current prices for similar sized ADUs on the market. So do we do a rent survey or do you just? Well, we look online at like different sites like Zillow and Craigslist and we determine based on not only the size but also the type of structure and also the location and determine affordability levels based on that and approximate rent prices. Okay, okay, that's all. Thanks. Okay, any other commissioner? Yes, commissioner Gordon. Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. I had a kind of similar question on that. If they're not de-restricted and we're just doing an internal review of the affordability based on the market today. Can you just explain how that counts like ongoing so we can count that this year but can they just raise those rents next year and then our numbers aren't really matching anymore of over the last 10 years or however long this process goes? Yes, and I know that Suzanne Isay is on the line and she can probably answer these questions a little bit better than I can if it's possible to give her an option to be able to speak right now. Okay, so Suzanne. Suzanne Isay and the attendees. Okay, I didn't hear what you said. Good morning Suzanne. Good morning, good morning commission. Yes, happy to help answer some of these questions. So just to give a little more background, traditionally when the housing element requirements were started many, many years ago the assumption and the sort of general rule is that units would be, have these different affordability levels basically based on market factors which tends to be borne out in the data. So in other words, it wasn't assumed that all of the units in the lower affordability levels were necessarily deed restricted. Just if you think about it, it obviously costs a lot less to rent a studio apartment than it does to buy a large single family home on a large lot. And it's basically, over the years, it's basically market data that jurisdictions have to use to show that units that they place in one income level or another on these bills are affordable at the level that the jurisdiction is asserting they are. So for example, if we permitted a project let's say was an apartment project with a lot of ones and two bedroom units or studio units or whatever, we would look at prevailing rents for that type of unit in the general location where the project is located and see what those prevailing and typical rent levels are for comparable units. And that's how we would determine which income level to assign them to when we're preparing these reports. And so although it is true rents can increase over time, people's incomes also increase over time. I mean, a lot of that is related to just general inflation over time. And so just because they're not deed restricted necessarily doesn't mean that, for example, a small studio unit is all of a sudden going to jump from being affordable, let's say, whether it's at the low income level or the moderate or what have you, it's not all of a sudden necessarily going to jump to the above mod category just because the price inflates a little bit over time. And so that's kind of the basic concept and framework for this table. Historically, they didn't even have a separate row for us to indicate which units were deed restricted or not. It was just all presumed that market forces will generate different types of housing product and it will fall into different affordability levels. Traditionally, the breakdown has kind of been the assumption that multifamily units tend to be smaller attached units tend to be in the more affordable ranges and single family homes, particularly the larger the lot size or the larger the home size would tend to be in the above mod category in most jurisdictions. So that's the basic framework. Thank you. I do have some follow up questions to that. Okay. If that's okay. So if they're not deed restricted and we kind of do an assessment and base it on size of the unit that's an internal review that we're doing. Is that something that continues each year like a standard deed restricted affordable unit that the county helps find tenants for and manages and it's based on income of the tenant as opposed to the size or rent level of the unit. How does that get managed going forward? Are you asking about deed restricted or non deed restricted? The non deed restricted units that we're counting as affordable but are they being managed like the deed restricted units are? Quite not in this way. So we're not required to, I mean, obviously we don't have rent limits on market rate units. What the sort of accountability I think you're kind of asking about with the accountability if we're reporting units at a certain level. Basically, if we report units at a certain level and HCD doubts that market forces would actually make that unit affordable to the level that we're claiming they can ask us for data to support our assertion. And I've been through that process before they do do that sometimes and you have to provide your data and they can either agree or not agree. And they could say, we're not buying it. We think these units are mod not low, something along those lines. And that's why we work pretty hard. And I can tell you this year and last year Natisha and I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out where rents for these different unit types or sales prices, if it's the case of a sales for sale unit, where they are on market because I have been through that process before with HCD. Generally, they don't dive into the data too much at a, when these annual reports are due but they will ask for it more when we are preparing a new housing element and they'll be reviewing all of the years that we've reported on for the prior cycle and wanna see what data we relied on to categorize them in one income level or another. Now, in terms of whether or not the rents fluctuate over time, there's no requirement necessarily in this housing element law that unit is permitted and we assert that it's at a certain income level when it's permitted. We are allowed to count it for that income level even though it may be that market forces change the affordability level slightly for that unit over time. But again, market prices go up and down, right? We go through different economic cycles, rents and home prices inflate and then in a recession, they can often deflate. We've seen that several times in the last 20 years those cycles happen and I think that's understood but the main goal of the law, essentially to really boil it down is to make sure that jurisdictions around the state are not just permitting large lot single family subdivisions. The main goal is to make sure that there is multifamily units, rental apartments, which traditionally have been met with a lot of resistance at the neighborhood level, a lot of community resistance to a larger, taller, more multifamily and particularly rental project types. And so the whole impetus for this kind of law and reporting mechanism was really to encourage and ensure that communities were also zoning for multifamily uses and rental apartment uses and things like that. So it was a goal that we would only be permitting subsidized deed restricted units of this or that type but really a wide variety of housing product types and particularly getting at multifamily rental product type. That's really the goal of this whole thing. Okay, thank you for all that clarification. I really appreciate it. So to just kind of sum it up, we can count these units even if they're not deed restricted just based on the owner or the property saying, hey, I'm gonna rent it at these levels or a certain amount of time. And that counts towards arena. It's not the owners. I'm sorry, it's not the owner's assertion. It's our analysis of the market data. We analyze where the rents are for that particular product type. In some cases, we may have rent listings for a particular property that we're looking at and may be able to use the actual rents for that property but more often than not, we're looking at comps for comparable housing unit types in the same area. Okay, and then you tell the owner, hey, this is the rate that you can charge if you want to be very low or low or moderating. Not exactly. So again, with the non-deed restricted, this is not a conversation between us and the owner. This is a reporting function where we're gathering data and reporting to the state. Really the owner is not in the picture at all at this point. Then I apologize, I was a little bit confused as how that relates to the PRH units that we created last year, if they're applied for last year. So the PRH units are separate and we do for the majority of the PRH units, the owner did provide us the rent information but that was very specific to the PRH unit. Okay, thank you. I could probably talk about this for a long time so I will leave my questions there and I appreciate your time. Well, I had a question. Yes, Sherry. So I think you're saying that if someone privately provides an ADU, we really can't control what private owners and non administratively controlled or registered low income housing units then it can be administered and discussed and set but outside of the public housing aspect we really can't control the rents. Is that basically it? Correct, so when it says non deed restricted that is literally what they mean. There is no deed restriction requiring it to be rented at a certain level. So what we're really relying on if we are claiming that the unit is sort of de facto by way of market forces affordable to this or that income group we have to do our market research and analysis and back that up with actual data and that's what we do but there's no legal rent limit applicable to the units that are listed in the non restricted line on that table. Understood. I mean, it's a problem in a market like us in San Francisco a very tiny little bedside can go for fabulous prices that are far from low income but there's really not much you can do to control it unless you have rent control, right? Correct and just to clarify we're looking at data for you in this county and we even will focus particularly on different sections or different areas of the county. So for example, in looking at what ADU rents are we're looking at units in San Lorenzo Valley and Soquel in Live Oak in specifically the unincorporated areas. So obviously in world real estate markets like San Francisco, New York very tiny units can be very expensive but here locally, they actually are in fact the price, there may still be some sticker shock to some folks if you haven't rented on the market recently the price may appear higher than what you might think but what you need to understand also is affordability is a factor of what the income levels are as well and the current income limits in this county are quite high. So for example, a household of four can make I'm sorry, $106,000 a year and still qualify as low income. And so when you see a small ADU being rented for maybe I don't know $1,100 or something you may think, oh, that seems pricey but it actually when we do the math and use the formulas to determine what income level it falls into, very often will fall into a very low or a low income rent. What is the low income consideration or number for one and two and three people since you have four people but I doubt that four people are not gonna live in a very tiny ADU or certainly they wouldn't ideally choose to that's not to say they don't but what are the low income levels at a lower level at the single and double, for example? And Suzanne, I do have this table that you provided me I can pull that information right now. So the maximum low income rents which is 80% of the AMI is for a studio it's $1,859 that's a household size of determined at about one for one bedroom it's 2,125 and for two bedroom it's 2,390 and that's for low income specifically. What is considered low income for a single person or a household with two people? 70. That's what I was asking. So for a, I can give that information that teaches. So for a one person household the low income limit is currently $74,350 a year. Now that's gross income. So that's before taxes are deducted. For a two person it's $85,000 a year. Well, then there's a huge part of the population of Santa Cruz County is considered low income. I mean, that's a logical confusion, right? Yeah, yeah, that certainly is. I could give you the very low limits as well if you would like. I think it's useful to know, get a context, yes. So for a single person the very low income limit is $46,350 a year and for a two person household it's $53,000 even a year. Okay, thank you. That's a good context which fleshes out what we're talking about a little bit. Sure. Can I follow up on a question with that? So if we, please thank you. So Suzanne, help me just finalize exactly how this works, I please and I appreciate it. So you are taking those incomes. We just found out 46,000 a year, 53,000 a year for example with the ADU where it's maybe a one bedroom and you're essentially backing into what the affordable rate would be if it was a very low or low income like just as like with standard low income rules. And then you're saying, okay, well on the market today we see 10 ADUs that are listed at a rate that's lower than or at a very lower low rate and then you're applying that towards arena numbers. Is that kind of how that's working? Essentially, yeah, that market analysis. So we look at as many comps as we can get. And also, I don't know if Natisha mentioned this earlier we do have an active ADU rent survey tool up on our website as well. So we did get some input from that. However, there wasn't really enough data there. It wasn't well vetted, it was self reported data and some of the entries were a little spotty. They didn't fill out all the information and so forth. So we didn't really rely on that. We went to Zillow and Craigslist and other platforms with active listings where we could get more comps. But essentially that's correct. So the formula that HCD tells us to use for determining what's an affordable rent is basically you take the annual income of the household you divide it by 12 to get a monthly income. And then if the rent is equal to or less than 30% of that household gross monthly income it's considered affordable. So that's how we figure out what the ceiling is for each of the income levels. And then we see if the, let's say for example in the case of ADUs, if the prevailing rents for let's say a one bedroom ADU in the unincorporated area is X. If that number X is at or below whatever the upper limit would be for a very low or low unit for example then we can count those types of units in that category. If it's higher than we would count it in that category wherever it falls. Good, that's a lot of great background as we look at all these things through the year. Sure. So how often do you run those reports or do the comps for the? We do this analysis. Yeah, we do it as we're trying to prepare the APR. So generally every spring we're gonna working on this. And I'm sure this is the case but that's an acceptable form of counting units towards arena numbers, right? This is based on many years of guidance that I've gotten from HCD as to how to do this. Great, perfect, okay. Thank you for clearing that up. I was a little bit lost at the non-dead restricted units in general. So as that's the first part of it, so I appreciate that. Are there any other questions for staff? Would you look and repeat? Go ahead. I just had a question. Go ahead. For the next year when we're looking at a great deal of rebuilding hopefully or in some not rebuilding because it can't be rebuilt how will you factor in or how do you factor in when catastrophes like the fire happened or catastrophes that may happen we've had some severe droughts in the past. What happens administratively to the way things are when you have a catastrophe? I'm asking simply because I know you've had to deal with it quite a bit. In other words, do you think it gets set aside? Do they get amended these rules? Do they get put on hold? Are they strictly enforced? So if you're talking about like applying towards our arena and what's counted in the housing element annual report those units are specifically net new units. So we would only count any net new permitted units. So rebuilds would not count. Correct. Unless they rebuilds additional units on the property. It's like, yeah. Well, I'm assuming that a certain number of people who are rebuilding after the fire would probably take advantage and build ADUs where they might not have had them before. Will those get counted? Yes, that's potentially yes. If they did then we would count those ADUs. And let's say three years from now and I'm totally, this is hypothetical. I mean nothing by it. Let's say Soquel Water District has to close in a moratorium on new building hypothetically in some other universe, whatever. What would that do? Would the state be understanding of the fact that we won't be able to build this much because we don't have the resource or not? Yeah, it goes for it. There's supposed to take that sort of thing into account. Yeah, so probably the most accurate answer here is it depends. Okay. But I can tell you in general when the regional body for in our case AMBAG is assigning units to the local jurisdictions within their region. So each city and unincorporated county they are supposed to take into account resource limitations, not sort of subjective limitations but actual legally enforceable limitations. Like for example, for a long time Monterey Peninsula was under orders to not issue any new building permits because they didn't have any water to provide. It couldn't provide will serve letters to those units. So they could not issue building permits. If we were in a situation that severe theoretically it would reduce the number of units that we get assigned as a part of our regional share. However, that is a clear, that's what I wanted to know. So it would be taken in consideration and the agency looking at it would be AMBAG. That is in theory. However, I just wanna clarify that the rules around these things have been shifting a lot in recent years and we are not sure yet what the interpretations will be by the time we get to that point for this coming rena cycle. So the state has been updating a lot of policies and so I would just caveat that that we'll see what happens this time around but that in theory they are supposed to look at a capacity for must have resources like utilities and things like that. Well, if it turns out the state in its wisdom decides that a certain number of the homes we lost during the fire cannot be rebuilt. What would that, would that, how will you deal with that? In other words, the available housing stock would go down because you couldn't rebuild the houses. So what you're saying is I'm asking you to answer questions that A, haven't come up yet and B, you have no, this would be up to the state and it's their problem. And this might be a good time to open the public hearing and come back to these questions of this discussion. Okay. And would that be okay with you commissioner Shepherd? Sure, I forgot. I apologize, probably should come out the way after the public hearing and you're right, thank you. Okay, so any other questions from the commissioners? So I will open the public hearing on item number seven, the review and discussion of the general plan and your report. Ms. Drake, is there anyone that from the public that wants to speak on this? Do we see any hands raised? Jocelyn, you're muted, Jocelyn. Oh, I couldn't see that she wants. Well, maybe she's not. There she goes. You're okay. Are there any participants with raised hands? And anyone here, Jocelyn? No, I can't. Is your sound off, Jocelyn? Jocelyn, none of us can hear you. We lost your sound. Oh, is that Ian, can you see if anyone has the raised hand? Start six on your phone. Oh, there we go. Good morning. Hello, can you hear me? This is Becky Steinbruner. Yes. Sorry, that was... Who? I know, I know what was happening there. And we should have three minutes on the clock for this public comment. Thank you very much. I appreciate this discussion. I've learned a lot this morning. This is Becky Steinbruner from the Aptos Hills to speak to Commissioner Shepard's recent thing about utilities. While there is no moratorium in Soquel Creek Water Districts area, there is in effect a financial moratorium in that they charge $55,000 per acre foot of anticipated new water use per unit. And that goes for any new hookup and has to be separate for ADUs. So financially, it is a moratorium. I was speaking hypothetically and not singling out Soquel. I could have said... I understand that. The Acme Water District, that just came to my mind. So let's not dwell on Soquel. I understand that. But I'm just saying that that's the case in the Mid County which is affected by affordable housing. And to that end, in the Aptos Village Project, phase one, there were to be five deeded affordable restricted units. I've looked it up on the public assessor's database. There are only four. So sometimes things don't get followed through. And that speaks very well to Commissioner Gordon's questions about how does the county manage these things. I want to point out on page 13 that there are no affordable projects in District 5. And that is of concern to me. And I know that having a daughter that served on the volunteer fire department, there are many communities under the bridges up there. So I hope that that can be remedied. I have a question. What is, quote, a unit? Does that, and how will that blend with these conversations the Board of Supervisors had on Tuesday about allowing tiny homes and other alternative housing units that can be moved? So how will we manage those types of affordable units and would those units be included in arena numbers? I have a question about the, oh gosh, I'm sorry. When there are the numbers for the R-combining zone that have been spread out, do those numbers reflect the required Measure J or are they separate? Because Measure J already requires a development to have 15% affordable inclusionary homes units in it. But now these R-combining units are being spread out and it looks like they're being tallied. If you could please explain how those two things, the R-combining and the Measure J blend with these other smaller projects, I just don't want to lose affordable units because of the Kaiser Medical Development. And to speak a little bit to what is affordable and what is not, our County is seeing a exponential rise in housing prices, even though the economic. Thank you, Becky. Becky, you dropped off. The timer, it was the timer. Yeah. Well, when we get back to, when I bring me the issue back to the commission, we can address your questions at that time, Ms. Steinberg. Anyone else with a raised hand? Let me check here. If there are any additional members of the public who wish to speak on this item, please raise your hand now by pressing star nine. And I am not seeing any chair. I'll bring it back to you. Okay. Thank you. I will then close the public hearing and bring the issue back to the commission. Is there staff available to answer the two questions that were posed? What is the definition of the unit and the R-combining zone? How are those challenged? Sure. Suzanne, did you want to answer these? Or would you like me to? I can start. So in terms of what is a dwelling unit, it is a unit that meets the building code, the state building code, and that has all of the necessary attributes to enable normal everyday living. So basically what that means is a sleeping area, a kitchen, and a bathroom. And it has to have utility hookups and that sort of thing. So that's what the code requires. And the other question was about the R-combining district. So regarding the R-combining district, in many of these project cases, several different code sections may be working in combination with a project. So for example, if it's a fore sale project in an R-combining district, the R-combining district requires that the project be at least 20 units an acre. At the same time, if the project is developing seven or more new fore sale homes, it would also be required to comply with Measure J, which requires that 15% of the homes in that project be affordable. Now, if it's a different type of project, if it's, for example, one of our subsidized rental housing developments in a apartment project, it's not going to come under Measure J because it's a rental project, not a fore sale project. However, in those projects, all of the units in the project are restricted. So it's 100% affordable, but it's because of the subsidies that it's getting and the deed restrictions associated with those loans. In most cases, the county is one of several lenders providing loans on those projects. So they are all affordable. So really, it depends on the particular R-combining site and what development is proposed on that site. Thank you. Any other questions by the commissioners? Is anyone prepared to make a motion on item number seven? I'll move the staff recommendation. Both of them, the two. Yes, I mean, one is that it's, we recommend it to be heard by the board and the second one you've already completed because it's conductive public caring. Right. Okay. Second. Thank you. All in favor say aye. Aye. And any opposed? And the motion carries. And this then item number seven is approved. Thank you. So moving right along. We have, do we have any planning directors report? It does not appear we have the planning director with us here today. So no report today. Okay. And how about upcoming meetings? The next scheduled planning commission hearing is March 24th and we do have one item on the agenda, which is the ADU and tiny home study session. So there will be a meeting. We also will have a meeting on April 14th, which has at least one item, the continued item from today. So we're moving right along. So that both of the scheduled hearings in April will be filled. So we'll be meeting on the 14th and the 28th. I'm not sure at this time about the 28th. We don't have any reservations at this time for the April 28th meeting. It's a little far out, but definitely the next meeting of the 24th and the April 14th, we do have items. Okay, I'm sorry. I didn't quite hear you. 24th meeting is the one where we'll hear the tiny home ordinance. That's the study session. And ADUs. Yes. Correct. And the 14th then. Yes. Okay, cool. Anything farther out that you know? Not that I am aware of at this time. I don't have Mike here with me. So he may be aware of something that hasn't hit my radar yet, but not at this time. However, we do have several projects in process. So I would anticipate we're gonna continue being fairly busy this spring. Okay. Is there a county council's report? Nothing to report, chair. Thank you. Thank you. So that brings us to the end of the March 10th meeting and with the next meeting being March the 24th, correct? That is correct. And actually- Thank you everybody, but I'm sorry. Oh, I was just gonna say, chair- I wanna thank everybody. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. I apologize. I meant to say in the agenda report that I wanted to acknowledge Ms. Steinbrenner's comments on posting additional instructions on connecting to the remote hearings on our agenda. And I'm sorry for jumping in. I just wanted to inform the planning commission that we are working on providing additional instructions on our agendas. We use an outdated agenda management system for planning commission hearings, which is why our hearing platform does not look like the boards and it's caused some confusion amongst the public and we are working on that. And I am committed to making the instructions more readily available on the agenda for the next hearing. Okay. I just had one thing, Jocelyn, if you at the beginning of the meeting for the technically challenged, because I've heard from a few, would you mind saying the phone number to call in twice or slower? Yes, I will. Thank you, commissioner Shepard. And yeah, and we'll provide the slide. It looks like the slide wasn't up today. So I apologize. This is a little bit of a challenge for us to get everything to come together for sort of a easy to follow hearing, but we're making progress and I think the next one should go a little bit more smoothly with the public information. Oh, I think you're doing great. You should see some meetings. I attend lately. I think you do a great job. Thank you, commissioner. Well, I do want to make a motion to adjourn. Yes, thank you very much. Yes, commissioner Dan. Just saying thank you and a motion to adjourn. Yeah, I just want to say this is better than the platform we had before. I think this TV is working great. And I also appreciate the constant reminders that the meeting is about to happen. Believe it or not, they're really useful. OK, thanks, everyone. I'll start and thank you. Goodbye. And thanks to the IT experts and to those who participated. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you.