 all right welcome everybody I'd like to call this meeting of the city of Santa Cruz planning commission to order tasks we have a roll call please commissioner Conway here Dawson here Gordon here Maxwell McKelvie here Paul Hamas here here commissioner Maxwell is absent with notice and do we have any statements of disqualification amongst the commissioners tonight seeing none we'll move on to oral communications oral communications is the time to come address us on anything not on the agenda tonight so if you'd like to speak to the agenda item hold on for just a minute we'll get there soon enough line up over here we'll do a two minute limit for oral communications and come on up thanks for coming and we want to hear what you have to say hi commissioners my name is Frank Barron I wanted to inquiry to staff about an item that's not on the agenda there was a an article in the lookout publication today and I wanted to get some clarification about height limits for fences if a landowner wanted to build a seven foot fence what would be the process would it is that something that is typically granted that's one of my questions the other one is regarding ad use accessory dwelling units if landowner wanted to do say 18 inches higher than what is typically allowed would that be something that could they could get an exception for those are two questions I'd like to have answers to okay do you want to leave your information here for staff and they can follow up with you okay next hello my name is Susan Monheit and I have a couple of questions follow-up questions from Frank I'm I'm really disappointed that there is no staff available at this meeting who could simply answer those very simple questions now I can I can answer them a variance would be needed for both of the situations and is our variances routinely granted is it a rare exception or is that is their president for allowing variances or I don't know if you want to leave your info so I have a question about building height and I'd like to know if the application of the density bone density bonus law qualifies as you know a waiver to the zoning height limit which is being done all over town because the developers have that entitlement to do that so are those waivers to the general plan zoning height limits and anyone answer that here I'm just wondering Sheriff can we just have staff just answer yes I think they're just asking some very bit like do variances happen is the question yeah happy to answer all those questions fence height the answer is it depends it depends on where it is if it's in the front yard setback it's a three and a half foot height limit if it's behind the front yard setback it's six feet off the top of my head there is a process for a conditional fence permit to go above those heights and depending on what it is it may require hearing it may not to go above height for an accessory dwelling unit would require a variance the the findings for approval of a variance are fairly onerous requires that there's some be some kind of special circumstance that's physical and associated with the property we don't grant those very readily because the standard is so high with respect to your question regarding density bonus there can be height waivers or exceptions that are granted in conjunction with the project so long as they have the requisite number of affordable units included in the project and concessions fall into that so Eric is there still an allowance if there is a desire to meet architectural style for roof height yes there are some so if there are slow height exceptions for for architectural purposes and other features that are associated with the building and one last very quick question would any of those circumstances cause a general plan amendment or rezoning not those circumstances that I responded to this evening okay thank you thanks all right any other all communications on items not on the agenda tonight going once going twice seeing none I'd like to open the public hearing for the appeal your minutes thank you can we get a motion to approve the minutes November 2nd and November 16th please I'll move both items or single item both minutes I could second all those in favor hi now I will open the public hearing for the appeal on the 900 high street project staff we have a presentation please yeah good evening chair can any members of the Commission I like to introduce Brittany Whitehill who's the project planner for this she's new to the city since June of this year and she comes to us from the city of Mountain View and so she'll be giving you her first presentation this evening also in attendance from staff since there are some transportation related issues is Matt Starchy from Public Works in case you have any questions around that I'll turn it over to Brittany good evening commissioners and it's great to meet you and welcome members of the public the item for your consideration this evening is an appeal of the zoning administrators acknowledgement of the environmental determination and approval of the minor land division design permit slope development permit density bonus request and heritage tree removal permit to divide a parcel into two lots and construct a 40 unit four story building within 20 feet of a 30 percent slope and to remove 14 heritage trees on a site with an existing church located at 900 high street in the R 110 zone district the project site is a 5.9 acre lot located on the north side of high street immediately northeast of its intersection with Moore Street the site is surrounded by UCSE campus housing to the north a quarry single family homes and city owned land and a church to the east single family homes across high street to the south and west like elementary school to the west and the properties existed with the church that hosts a preschool and a dwelling unit in November of 2022 the city received an application proposing a 40 unit four story apartment building on the church campus the project proposes to split the parcel into two lots a lower 3.9 acre lot that will retain the church campus and an upper two acre flag lot with the apartment the project proposes to remove 14 heritage trees either due to their condition or due to conflicts with the development footprint the project proposes to provide five low income units and four very low income units amounting to 22.5 of the total 40 units this level of affordability exceeds the 10 percent minimum lower income threshold to qualify for density bonus additionally this level of affordability exceeds the minimum 20 percent inclusionary requirements of the city code the density bonus request does not include a request for additional density bonus units but does request concessions from two development standards and a waiver from one development standard the concession requests include a reduced front setback and this is from the interior lot line of approximately 17.5 feet as opposed to the minimum 20 foot setback secondly a concession is requested for increased building height of four stories and up to 54 feet at the tallest point of the building where the maximum height allowed in the zone district is two and a half stories and 30 feet and both concession requests aim to reduce the overall grading and construction costs of the project to enable the provision of the affordable units the applicant is requesting one waiver to place the trash enclosure within the front setback of lot one and this is the only possible location for the trash enclosure that complies with public works refuse standards and that avoids constraints such as the steep slopes heritage trees both the building and trash enclosure will be set back over 250 feet from high street the project is also subject to the provisions of California Senate bill 330 which amended the housing accountability act in 2020 aiming to maximize and streamline the production of housing throughout the state the applicant submitted a pre-application for this project in 2022 and the pre-application was deemed complete on January 11th 2023 for consistency with the pre-application submittal requirements of SB 330 as a result the project is locked into all standards and policies that were in place the time the pre-application was deemed complete and the project is not subject to the city's new objective standards for multifamily development so the zoning administrator heard this item on October 4th 2023 15 members of the public spoke at the meeting eight public comments were generally supportive of the project citing the project's contributions towards the city's housing supply seven public comments opposed the project citing concerns with vehicle congestion traffic safety impacts tree removal and neighborhood compatibility on October 15th 2023 Deborah Elston representing the Westlake neighborhood association filed an appeal of the zoning administrators approval of the project since the appeal was filed 118 additional pieces of written correspondence have been received 74 supporting the project and 44 opposing it the following provides an overview of the concerns raised in the appellants letter and a summary of staff's responses however this presentation is not intended to provide an exhaustive review of all items raised in the appeal in depth responses to the appellants points are included in the planning commission agenda report and additionally the appeal letter was an was included as an attachment and as just a point of clarification I'd like to highlight that a lot of comments reference the project having 59 units however it is 40 units the project site has a zoning designation of our 110 and a general plan designation of low density residential both of which allow primarily for single-family residential uses understandably the appeal raised questions as to how the 40 unit apartment complex could be allowed on site SB 330 identifies the general plan as superseding any inconsistent zoning designation and requires an agency to permit residential development on a particular site at the density allowed under the general plan while the zone district does not provide for multifamily development the project site is 5.9 acres in size and the general plan land use designation allows for a base residential density of 59 units the project proposes 40 units which is within the allowed density range a prohibition of multifamily development on the site would preclude development at the allowed density under the general plan and be inconsistent with the housing accountability act general plan policies support clustering of residential development with units closer together or attached to respond to a site's topography environmental constraints or adjacent uses the project will retain the existing church and ancillary uses on site and the site is constrained by heritage trees and a steep slope that limits access to the upper portion I'm considering these constraints the general plan policies about supporting residential or rather clustering residential density support the practice of clustering on this site to ensure future development does not exceed the density ranges of the general plan a condition of approval requires a de restriction to be recorded on both new lots to limit the overall site base density to the maximum allowed under the general plan and this practice of clustering residential density was recently litigated on a project at 126 eucalyptus Street and the courts did rule in favor of the city's practice of clustering residential density another concern raised in the appeal pertains to traffic safety near Westlake elementary school the church and ancillary uses at 900 high street are currently serviced by a driveway that circumnavigates the site in a counterclockwise direction providing ingress at the eastern edge of the site and egress at the western edge adjacent to Westlake elementary as is shown on the slide the appeal letter raised concerns about existing on site traffic hazards from cars exiting the site and turning right westbound onto high street and that additional traffic generated by the project would worsen existing conditions and potentially create additional safety hazards at the intersection of high and more especially during the Westlake elementary pick up and drop off hours the appellant did request traffic accident and ticketing data for the intersection of high street and more street police records indicate that two traffic accidents and 18 traffic stops have occurred at this intersection within the last year and police have indicated that this is not unusually high for an intersection of the scale during review of the project the city public works department identified that the on-site circulation could be improved due to the proximity of the egress driveway to the driveway for Westlake elementary the applicants worked with public work staff to renavigate on-site traffic by designating the West driveway next to Westlake as a right turn only entrance only driveway as a result the primary ingress and egress will be provided to from the east driveway which is located further away from Westlake elementary signage will be placed on site to deter residents and visitors from turning left across high street onto the West driveway members of the public have requested that a barrier be placed in the middle of high street to prevent vehicles from turning left into the West driveway and public work staff have considered this request and ultimately determined it could create an additional traffic safety hazard additionally the West driveway will provide emergency vehicle and trash collection access so it needs to be accessible from both directions the appellant made various claims related to the methodologies used to analyze vehicle miles traveled the MT and level of service LOS impacts of the project which are discussed in the next couple of slides in 2013 the state passed Senate bill 743 or SB 743 which altered how transportation impacts from new developments are measured under CEQA prior to SB 743 transportation impacts were assessed in terms of level of service a measure of automobile delays along a roadway while LOS was the default metric for determining transportation impacts for many years LOS is an automobile centric metric that does not support statewide sustainability goals and therefore can no longer be used as part of a project CEQA analysis in June 2020 the city council adopted VMT guidelines that established a VMT threshold as the new transportation metric to determine CEQA impacts and established that certain projects can be assumed to have a non-significant impact or screen out based on their location and characteristics as part of the required sequel sequel review for the project a project specific VMT analysis was conducted and the project was determined to meet two screening criteria of the city VMT guidelines resulting in no significant impact and a detailed discussion of this can be found in the attachment called statutory exemption checklist so while LOS is no longer a valid metric for analyzing environmental impacts under CEQA agencies may continue to implement LOS focused policies outside of the CEQA process the Santa Cruz general plan does include several aspirational LOS related policies and city staff strives to implement these policies through development review to the extent that they do not conflict with VMT related policies of the general plan or violate the requirements of SB 743 staff also relies on project specific LOS analysis to identify key locations where traffic infrastructure improvements could improve LOS the city requires a traffic impact study or a TIS to be prepared for any project that is estimated to generate more than 50 vehicle trips during the PM peak hour projects that are that are generating fewer than 50 PM peak hour trips are exempt from this requirement but typically required to pay a traffic impact fee which is used to fund city transportation related capital improvements projects a trip generation memo was prepared for the project and estimated the apartment complex would generate between 20 and 26 p.m. peak hour trips which is well below the 50 p.m. peak hour trip threshold so a traffic impact study was not required to be prepared the VMT are I apologize the appeal letter made various claims about the legitimacy and adequacy of both the VMT and LOS analyses that were conducted for this project however VMT analysis was conducted in accordance with the requirements of the city's guidelines and the California Environmental Quality Act the project was reviewed for traffic safety and consistency with LOS related policies of the general plan consequently the onsite circulation plan was improved and the project will pay a traffic impact fee so touching on some general plan policies the appeal search that the project violates several transportation and traffic related general plan policies including those shown on the screen staff's assessment however is that the project in fact supports these policies regarding LU 4.2 the project site is located within a half mile walking distance of several community serving uses including UCSC Westlake Elementary Westlake Park several churches and a small strip mall including a convenience store and laundromat additionally the site is located approximately one mile for Mission Street and surrounding streets which provide access to numerous commercial uses and the site is located within a half mile of several major transit stops regarding M12.2 the city will continue to implement the capital improvements program which includes two approved transportation related infrastructure projects in the vicinity and traffic impact fees collected by projects such as this one will be used to help fund those those CIPs regarding M3.2 as previously described the project was reviewed by traffic and transportation engineering staff of the Public Works Department in response to the traffic and transportation review the circulation plan was modified to reduce potential hazards the appeal expresses concerns that the project violates general plan policies related to congestion management LOS and reduction of cut through traffic on neighborhood streets the 2030 general plan EIR studied citywide roadway capacity and identified two impacted intersections near the project site and the project is expected to result in marginal increases in traffic but the project size would be within the potential buildout of the general plan and thus within the scope of the traffic analyses conducted for the EIR and would not result in any new significant or more severe significant impact. Lastly regarding traffic impacts the appellant claims that the traffic on high street during afternoon hours greatly impacts mental health of neighbors the housing accountability act strictly limits the city's ability to deny a residential project or reduce its density when said project is consistent with the city's objective standards to do so the city would need to find that the project creates a significant quantifiable direct and unavoidable impact based on objective identified written public health and safety standards policies or conditions as they existed on the date the application was deemed complete and while there may be impacted intersections and at times significant traffic in the project vicinity there is no evidence to suggest that the marginal additions to traffic generated by this project would result in a significant quantifiable direct and unavoidable impact. The appeal raised concerns that the onsite parking provided is insufficient to accommodate the uses. Effective January 1st of this year AB 2097 eliminated all parking requirements for the site within a half mile of an existing or planned major transit stop and this was codified into the city code in April 2023. The entire site is located within a half mile of several major transit stops and therefore parking is not required. The project is voluntarily proposing 20 parking spaces on lot one and retaining 97 spaces on lot two. Historically Peace United has rented facilities to the community for various events and the appellant has raised concerns as to how parking for these events will be managed. Peace United has specified that most events are small such as meetings for which the existing parking supply is sufficient. Periodically Peace United will host a rent facilities for larger events such as weddings memorial services and special holiday church services. The city has not received complaints regarding any event in the past. Peace United has also indicated that they will evaluate onsite parking needs and impacts when considering future events. If every significant event beyond the scope of what would typically be allowed on the site were proposed a five day use permit would need to be obtained and at that time possible impacts of the event would be evaluated. However the city's ability to regulate parking on site would remain limited under state law. Really quickly regarding bike parking the project would be required to provide 53 bike parking stalls and as opted to provide 96 and the provision of abundant bike parking is aligned with several general plan policies. The project proposes removal of 14 heritage trees six that are in poor condition and eight that are within the project footprint. The project arborist evaluated whether an alternative building location would enable preservation of additional heritage trees. However due to various constraints including required setbacks from highly sloped areas of the site and the quarry to the east a feasible alternative building placement that resulted in a greater degree of hate of heritage tree preservation was not identified. A condition of approval requires each heritage tree to be removed be replaced by either one 24 inch size tree or three 15 gallon trees which is consistent with the city's adopted mitigation policies and the city arborist did evaluate the proposed removal and mitigation and concurs with these recommendations. The appeal raised concerns about the proposed heritage tree removal citing possible wind and noise impacts and soil instability concerns. Staff found inconclusive research to support the idea that trees can be planted in a manner to provide wind buffering. However the city has no adopted policy requiring trees to be planted or maintained in this way. The research surrounding the efficacy of trees as noise buffers is also inconclusive. Importantly the California Supreme Court recently made a decision regarding a high profile case in Berkeley that centered around noise impacts generated from a housing development. The courts found that noise impacts generated by people residing at a housing development cannot be viewed as a significant environmental impact under CEQA. Soon after Assembly Bill 1307 which echoes the court's decision was passed by the state assembly and signed into law. And regarding soil instability most research surrounding the potential erosion impacts of tree removal stems from the clear cutting of many trees and the tree removal proposed on site is selective. Therefore this research about clear cutting trees is not applicable. The plant pallet is also proposing a net increase to the number of trees that would mitigate any potential erosion impacts and additionally extensive geotechnical analysis has occurred and the project will be required to implement the recommendations of the geotechnical engineer. The appeal also cited concerns with impacts to public views asserting that VISTAs from the residences on Hagar court which is located uphill of the project site will be impacted and that the project violates general plan policies related to protection of public views and open spaces. Regarding policy CD 1.2 the general plan EIR identifies specific significant views and features in the city as is shown on this slide. Furthermore as you can see shown in the slide the project site is this red arrow it would not impact any identified significant view within the city's general plan EIR. The points close to the project site where the coasts may be viewable are likely uphill from Hagar court and these public vantage points are already obstructed by existing buildings on private properties. Regarding CD 1.4 although a large portion of the site is not currently developed and is in a natural state the project is not adjacent to any designated open space therefore this policy is not applicable. And lastly regarding CD 2.1 the site is not located within a historic district or within an area plan that seeks to preserve an established architectural style and additionally the Housing Accountability Act prohibits agencies from requiring projects to comply with standards that are not objective quantifiable written development standards. The subjective nature of CD 2.1 precludes the city from using it to deny or reduce density of a housing project unless those specific public health and safety findings can be made. So the appellant claims that preliminary geotechnical analysis on the site may have resulted in a murky appearance of West Lake Pond. The geotechnical analysis performed at the site is typical of pre-construction geotechnical analysis and reflects the industry best practice standards. The appellant did not provide evidence or rationale as to how the borings could have resulted in the changes to the appearance of West Lake Pond which is located approximately 750 feet from the project site. The project's geotechnical engineer provided a letter summarizing the geotechnical investigation that has occurred to date and confirming that no ground water has been encountered. The appellant states that tribal resources including burials and artifacts have been identified during other construction projects in the vicinity and notes that the project is located within a highly sensitive archaeological area. The appellant states that an oversight person should be present on site presumably during construction activities. The site is located within areas in the general plan that are mapped as sensitive and highly sensitive for archaeological resources. An Albion environmental prepared an initial archaeological investigation and subsequent extended phase one study. These studies did not indicate the presence of any intact resource and recommended that the applicant notify the appropriate authorities should earth moving work result in the discovery of an intact resource and this recommendation is consistent with the city standard condition of approval that's included for this project. Lastly I'll highlight some construction related concerns raised by the appellant. The appeal submitted initially included a letter from coastal community preschool which is the preschool currently operating on the site. The letter raised a variety of concerns including potential noise and emissions impacts the preschool. On November 7th of this year staff received a follow-up email from the preschool administration indicating that the concerns expressed in their original letter have been addressed through coordination with the property owner peace united church of christ and both parties have indicated that they will work in coordination as the project progresses. Additionally the appellant has requested that construction vehicles utilize bay drive as opposed to high street to access the site. Public work staff concur that the use of bay drive would likely be less impactful to neighborhood. To address the concerns raised by the appellant and coastal community preschool staffs recommended conditions of approval include three new conditions of approval. Apologies there. One requiring the the applicant to provide a construction access and management plan prior to building permit issuance when requiring that stationary construction equipment meets specified emission standards and one requiring a neighbor liaison contact to be identified and contact information to be posted on site to field any construction concerns or questions. And these are included as conditions number 45 46 and 47. And as a final point I would like to thank Commissioner Dawson for her suggestion regarding maintaining access to the rear lot one which will include the apartment. A portion of the driveway providing access to lot one does cross onto lot two and this will be addressed by an ingress and egress easement on the site. However for additional clarity staff is proposing a new condition 56 that is shown on the screen to formally memorialize within the conditions that lot one needs to be maintained as accessible. The appellant has expressed their desire for a less dense project however staff would like to highlight the city's legal obligations under the housing accountability act. The city cannot deny a housing project or reduce its density FAR or unit count if the project is consistent with objective standards that were in effect at the time the application was deemed complete unless the city makes written findings that that the project would have a specific adverse impact upon public health and safety. Ultimately the appeal provided no evidence to support these findings and the assertions presented are generally unsubstantiated factually inaccurate or irrelevant to the project. Additionally the appellant and several public comments have recently requested a pause on the project. It is important to note that SB 330 also establishes a five public hearing maximum for housing projects and continuing this item to a future meeting would constitute an additional meeting for the purpose of this five meeting limit. The permit streamlining act also requires an agency to act on a project within 60 days of the determination that the project is exempt from CEQA which was achieved at the October 4th zoning administrator meeting. When the zoning administrator decision is appealed the city code requires the planning commission to hear the meeting at the soonest available or hear the item at the soonest available meeting. Staff continues to support the project as designed and with the conditions approved by the zoning administrator with the addition of the three new construction related conditions previously discussed and the new condition number 56 that was shown on the previous slide. The project is consistent with the general plan and meets all applicable required objective site development standards except as modified by state density bonus waivers and concessions. The number of affordable units exceeds the density bonus and inclusionary housing requirements therefore staff recommends that the planning commission deny the appeal upholding the zoning administrator's approval of the minor land division design permit, slope development permit, density bonus request, heritage tree removal permit. Based on the findings and conditions found in the agenda report with the addition of the new condition number 56 shown on the previous slide and the formal recommendation language is shown on the screen. Thank you and we're happy to address any questions and I believe the appellant has submitted a video testimony. All right thank you for that report. I know I've got one question. Do other commissioners have questions? Commissioner McKelvie. As far as the archaeological resources assessment goes they did a surface reconnaissance and then a phase one study you said. That's correct and was there any reason not to have an observer during excavation? So typically we would require we would rely heavily on the recommendations of the archaeologists. If they had discovered an intact resource during their initial investigations then we would definitely require an on-site monitor or if there was some other reason, something unusual that they had discovered and made that recommendation we would require it. I just know that I myself have had experience with projects where observers were required even when there wasn't any observed artifacts intact or otherwise and I'm just curious as to how this compares with the typical practice. Yeah it's it's typically a kind of a two-step process for the archaeologists. First they get in contact with Sonoma State University which is sort of the regional clearinghouse for archaeological studies and reporting so they look at what's been recorded in proximity and then they do their surface reconnaissance and then make their recommendations after you know getting the results of those two exercises. I'll note that a couple years ago we just did a major overhaul or a review of our archaeological maps and updated them based on all the various studies that have occurred since General Plan 2030 was adopted about 10 years ago so those those maps are up to date so I'm sure that played into the conclusion as well. That's been investigated in terms of the need for an observer versus... right it's it's their professional recommendation right yeah and then you know as sort of another layer of protection we have a standard condition of approval that basically requires the applicant to stop work if an unanticipated resource is found during construction and that happens from time to time. Okay thank you. A good question I'm most surprised by the experience up here. Okay I wanted to return just back to the the allowable residential density on the acres I think I got it but the 5.9 acres gets split into 3.9 and then that allows 10 dent du per acre on the 3.9 acre parcel. So the 3.9 acre parcel will actually retain the church so the development is proposed on the yeah and there's policies in the general plan that essentially would allow for a project to be subdivided and the residential density to be consolidated on one lot and to prevent a situation in the future where you know then someone comes you know essentially we've transferred that development right to lot one so that will be memorialized through a a recorded document on both properties. Okay that makes sense I just switched them in my mind which is my confusion uh traffic studies traffic studies VMT one more question um I think the VMT thing is great so it indicated like in the worst case peak PM hour the trip would generate less than 30 trips. Right. Okay and there's 40 units so that'd be like three quarters of the people in that building assuming one car per unit all leaving within one hour. Okay I just like to kind of like put this into reality because it sounds like a lot but 30 trips an hour meh okay uh other questions. All right so in this case we will next hear from the appellant and uh miss Deborah Elston submitted some comments on video they're about 11 minutes long so we're going to watch that and then the appellant has nine more minutes in there 20 minutes if you want to add anything I understand there's other representatives here um then after about 20 minutes we'll close that presentation. Planning commissioners I'm really sorry as the appellant that I cannot attend this evening's meeting as I have previous commitments that could not be changed I requested that staff change to a later date and when it was set for November 30th I was told that it could not accommodate a later date so here I am I would like to elaborate on some of my points raised in the appeal some of them are very critical to the effects of the project in our neighborhood our main concerns are safety geologic procedures land use traffic parking and the inconsistency of the prop project with zoning and adjacent properties I will only bring up a few critical points as neighbors will be able to provide more details on other points of our neighborhood appeal regarding our point number seven related to the zoning of the church property and our neighborhood the project numbers are being rearranged in a way that is not supported by the general plan or the municipal code the project site is being divided into two parcels one that is already developed with a church and the other two acre portion that is undeveloped this results in essentially doubling the density of the site because the proposal includes transferring residential density from an already developed property to an underdeveloped parcel legally speaking there is no authority to transfer density of housing that would be permitted on the resulting developed parcel to the other underdeveloped parcel of two acres the resulting developed parcel already has an established land use that has existed for 64 years and is built for and operated as a church if the church wants to demolish its development and build housing in its place it could do so but there is no authority to transfer development from a developed parcel to an undeveloped parcel to increase density of the undeveloped parcel moreover the general plan and the zoning ordinance are not consistent as the staff report states page 144 of the general plan lu 3.7.1 allow and encourage development that meets the high end of the general plan use designation density and less constraints associated with the site characteristics and zoning development standards require a lower density the zoning is consistent with a range of densities allowed in the general plan and this project actually does not conform to the general plan since the zoning standards are less than the maximum permitted under the general plan designation but within the range permitted under the general plan designation the zoning development standard is r1-10 and the project far exceeds the standard there seems to be some flaws and conflicts in the planning analysis process the following are brief just noted items number two on the appeal page 2.3 analysis regarding storm water runoff and rivers down high street the analysis stated that the public work staff confirmed there is no known flooding on high street i guess i've lived with this for so long it has become the norm as well as all the other neighbors flooding happens on a regular basis at spring and high larent and high streets and a river does go down high street in fact several years ago there were sandbags placed on the street in front of a home which eventually did get flooded out even the bike lane on high street can be compromised with the river and rocks from the hill on a regular basis rewording the appeal points resulted in changing meaning or completely missing the point of an appeal item number six appeal page 2.6 analysis using the vehicle miles traveled while preferred at as a state standard it does not adequately cover the true reality of the traffic picture the baseline vmt reflects quote regional average per capita and is based on units many units have multiple bedrooms in one case five bedrooms units don't drive cars people do analysis states potential number of residents is not an input used to determine a project's eligibility to screen out vmt impacts this may be true a rule to follow but it hides the actual use of vehicles and burdens on the environment this also doesn't include the reality of traffic generated by westlake school or ucse let's use vmt on westlake school and ucse this project cannot stand alone without looking at a cumulative aspects of other properties i also would like to know that once people live in the neighborhood they will quickly learn they cannot use high street and will use other neighborhood streets to get off the hill at the very least a level of service should be studied to figure out what relief can be used to alleviate the already burdened street and ensure safety for all users when the bucket of water is full it will eventually overflow level of service can be used in specific circumstances number eight of the appeal page 2.11 questions the number of people living at the property the church believes that there maybe would be a hundred people we believe it could be up to 150 applying restrictions on the number of occupants who can inhabit a unit can be argued as violations of the fair housing act even though they are encouraging no cars the reality is more people more cars traffic and parking number 10 of the appeal page 2.13 questions on social events and guest parking the planning department reply was simply stated that no complaints regarding but in past events probably because there was parking available now they will have people living on the property and taking up spaces the church stated they have agreements with westlake school for parking but that's not very much parking number 11 of the appeal page 2.13 regarding vistas cd 1.2 in the general plan to use high street when looking up the hill you're absolutely right you will not see this project because you're looking up hill but to state it is not seen from surrounding properties is completely incorrect one point of view westlake park ragley and spring streets it will be a significant view number 19 appeal 2.16 analysis in summation regarding children's safety with all traffic a policeman was requested by the school to be there quote we're asking to report on ticketing and accidents in the planning analysis it states that the appellate claims that a police officer will be required to be stationed end quote at that location in my 23 years of neighborhood work and volunteering with the police department i would never make this statement i know it is not possible to have an officer sitting on a street when they have numerous calls for service to answer number 22 appeal page 2.17 street parking permit program the city staff does not recommend deviating from established permit program meaning that one person may park three blocks from their residents westlake neighborhood already has a permit program and the reason why was because the students were doing parking their cars for a week on the street now i'm wondering why we have a permit program if neighbors from three blocks away can get a permit and park on our neighborhood streets back to square one analysis summary 2.19 states the project is consistent with the general plan meets all applicable required objective site development standards yet on page 2.10 it states the project violates the following four general plan policies and explains those violations away for various reasons it actually violates others as well these policies were written for reasons of protecting neighborhoods i was an alternate during the general plan process and it was a priority with many people who did participate and now those protections seem to be explained away m.33 at the end of the paragraph states none of the local slash residential streets appear to provide more direct or efficient access to and from the project site this is very narrow-minded just ask any neighbor you'll get the streets they use and they do not use high and bay streets not saying them because i don't want to add to the traffic on those streets new neighbors will quickly learn where to drive i thank you for your time and listening i ask you to vote for a pause on this project till many concerns are answered that's not a no that's a pause a pause will help save everyone's time and money involved in this project including the developer thank you and i am representing as the appointed president westlake neighbors association this is deborah elston thank you all right would the appellant like to add anything else on formally in the remaining time yeah come on up we're expecting you thank you for being here i've uh since my statement is uh rather lengthy um and i'm going to be reading it because there's no way i could memorize it um i prepared a copy for each of you if someone so we've got about nine minutes left i want to hear what you have to say but just keep on time it'd be seven okay great so we're good um good evening my name is norman tartiff and i'm here this evening on behalf of the spring tree homeowners association the quarry referred to and the reports and plans for this development application is on our property on the east borderline of this development site um we were unaware that this development had been changed from its initial proposal in 2018 into this revised proposal until we recently received a notice in the mail informing us of this pending planning commission hearing uh concerning it so we have not had an opportunity to give any input um we are gravely concerned about the safety of this four-story apartment complex approved by the planning department being situated in such close proximity to the edges of the tall cliffs and our former quarry site um i believe these were referred to as um significant slopes of something of that nature but they're vertical cliffs um the spring tree development is on the site of the former limestone quarry operations in this area of Santa Cruz we have several areas of tall cliffs that pose hazards to construction of residential housing the single family residences in our association that are on proximity to these cliffs have setbacks of no less than 100 feet from the cliff's edge as any closer was deemed unsafe by the geologists for the project the proposal for this high street development has now moved to the building site to the east near the cliffs and increased the structure height to four stories yet it only has a 50 foot setback in the area near the tallest cliffs and even less of a setback in the lower area of the building these are 50 to 70 foot cliffs um these cliffs were created by decades of mining and blasting with dynamite right up until the early 1970s the quarry area situated below the cliff is fenced off and has a locked gate due to the safety concerns in regards to falling rocks and slides in the area no one representing the development or the planning department has contacted our association requesting access to these cliffs as part of assessing their stability no photos of these cliffs are included in any of the reports or the development plant the development plants that i have seen yet they form the entire east boundary line of the development site i invite the members of this planning commission to come visit the quarry site in person and from ground level look up at these cliffs that are 50 to 70 feet tall before you decide to approve a four-story complex along their upper edge it is a sobering perspective quite different than looking at it from the building site the little eight-foot redwood trees observed from the building site on the other side of the cyclone fence along the edge of the cliffs are in reality tops of 50-year-old redwood trees growing up from the quarry basin below imagine moving the apartment complex next to bank of the west downtown across the street up onto the cliffs across from the town clock we all know we need more housing and Santa Cruz but it also should be safe housing the level of risk for this high density housing as currently proposed for this site by the developer is called into question here the answer to those questions should come directly from the most qualified geologists the preliminary geotechnical investigation dated march 2023 by these associates contains numerous statements into regards to the dangers and risks of this development site that as stated need to be investigated in greater depth in a phase two geotechnical study such a study has been made a condition of the approval for this project as it should be there is also a 2018 preliminary geological report as opposed to a geotechnical report by zen geology who also recommends a more in-depth geological investigation in a phase two report this has not been made a condition of approval for this project we feel it is essential that a phase two geological study also be explicitly required as a condition of approval this is generally required by the Santa Cruz county planning for this type of construction in similar geologic environments we understand that the soil engineers are working closely with geologists but that does not negate the benefit of a separate geological report that the geologist has their seal and their signature on the primary concern with this site is the limestone rock formation known as karst which is characterized by voids fishers caves and sinkholes these concerns require the expertise of a licensed geologist to do a full slope stability analysis especially on the hazards associated with the adjacent cliffs going from native soils to the construction of a four-story building with heavy equipment and soil compactors will certainly be an added burden on these cliffs the initial 2018 geologic investigation by zen geology was followed up by a march 10th 2023 letter of updated geologic feasibility from eric zen the geologist now with pacific crest engineering that letter recommends retaining pacific crest engineering for a phase two geologic evaluation and supervision of excavation the ucsc has developed a protocol for assessing the hazards of building over a karst site that eric zen is very familiar with we feel that item number 41 of the final conditions of approval for this project required requiring a phase two geotechnical report study by the d's associates needs to be reworded to explicitly require that the additional surface exploration subsurface exploration of the marble karst formations be done and approved by a licensed geologist familiar with the karst environments the current pre-eliminary geologic report for this project was done for the original design in 2018 that report needs to be updated due to the fact that the building envelopes have now been moved to an area in close proximity to the cliffs and the buildings are now four stories tall a soils engineering report alone which is what the geotechnical report is is not adequate due to the nature of the geologic rock formations of this site a separate phase two geologic study and report by qualified geologists is necessary in addition to a phase two soil study geotechnical report by d's and associates this is a common practice for such geologic environments in the absence of the assurances of this specific requirement we will continue to oppose the development as being overly hazardous if any of you would like to visit the quarry site and look up at the cliffs and see where these buildings will actually stand um you're welcome to contact me and i'll happy open the quarry area to you and that goes for anybody from the city as well and it amazes me that nobody has done that yet thank you thank you and on time which i appreciate so i'd like to give the city a chance to respond or rebut any of those assertions no i think we'll need to just double check the the recommendations of the reports um and yell i'll just double check and then and then come report back right nothing at this time yeah we can talk about it more as a public comment all right so at this point we're gonna open this meeting for public comment i'm excited to see all of you truly on all sides i see a lot of familiar faces i grew up in this neighborhood i've seen the cliff and the building and all this so i want everyone to please remain focused on positive energy and productive conversation we're all here to make our town as good as possible to have a civil discourse we ask that you limit your questions to two minutes at a max if other people have already said what you said there's no need to come up and say it again that being said feel free to express yourself we're here to listen everybody and i've been doing this like 11 years i've never well once i didn't change my mind during public testimony so it's just amazing what people contribute everybody who's here i did also hear i think a young person in the back so if if people are willing and families want to talk first and then head home to bed that's fine with me too and as the applicant was going to get an opportunity to present next before public comment is that changed that's correct i skipped you so yes you heard from the appellant that it's the applicant's turn then you take public testimony and then after public testimony there will be an opportunity for the appellants to rebut any comments made and then you close the public hearing all right well come on up sorry about that everybody i got the word or wrong yeah so i would like so my name's civilly simon i'm a part of workbench and the application team um and for uh the beginning i would like to introduce the pastor of pc united church because i first met with the representative of the church in october of 2016 so this has been a long conversation and process to reach a vision and work toward this project but it's really the church that had the vision first to do this project so i think their motivation and context is important to start with evening my name is david patty and i'm the pastor of peace united church of christ there are quite a few of us here tonight who are not going to speak but uh i did want you to see who they are and so i'm going to ask the members and friends of peace united church of christ who are here to support this okay yeah thank you and so on their behalf i want to offer a brief word about what this project means to us peace village is a central feature of our vision for the future of our ministry and peace village is much more than a housing development our church organized in downtown santa cruz in 1857 and 100 years later established a new campus at 900 high street with a large and beautiful facilities dedicated in june of 1959 64 years ago from the beginning it has been a part of the mission of peace ucc to be a place for the wider community we offer our campus and facilities as a place of generous welcome a gathering place for creativity and common cause a sanctuary for prayer and praise in the arts imagine imagine many of you have been on our campus any number of times and we are a place for healing and service and recovery for the marginalized and for those who've had a hard time finding a place we hold a vision of our church as a beloved community of caring and sharing where persons are respected and diversity is celebrated as the gift of a loving god peace village is a part of that vision for the flourishing of our ministry on the high street campus and beyond this is not the scheme of a distant developer this is the dream of a community includes 40 new units of housing with a significant percentage almost half of income qualified and accessible housing but it's most exciting as a vision of our future on high street where we are committed a place that invites neighborliness come what may and nurtures community a place to live and learn and play and grow with a church at the heart of it i thank you for your attention so with that it has been my work and the work of our team to try to work to find opportunities to create more affordable housing in our community and especially to try to find ways to create affordable housing that's not publicly funded because there's the only problem with publicly funded affordable housing is there's not enough of it so trying to find new ways to do that and one of the ways that we've found is by partnering with churches like peace united church it was the first church that we started working with so we've really found that this is an ideal project for our mission as well but one of those very reasons is on a topic that comes up a lot here which is that we think a lot about transportation in particular and it's our mission to build housing where people are driving to so that there can be less specifically you know we put it in technical terms vmt but we all know to reach our climate goals in california we have to be driving less in total and we don't want to sprawl we want to build infill but where is that of course in a even more dense sense that's going to be downtown but this is also we immediately saw the opportunity to build housing next to the county's biggest employer which is ucse and so we're we're immediately interested because the very reason there's a lot of traffic at certain times going there is because it's a place a lot of people are driving to so there's it's an opportunity to have housing in that location so some of those people are driving to fewer places secondly we're interested then in how we do it and we think a lot about this and we've had years to work on this project and there will be years more to help people live with fewer cars there so that is why there's an emphasis on and it's not just a lot of bike parking but there will be other features around that as well it's why we've been talking to santa cruz metro and really excited that they're planned to increase the headway on high street to 15 minutes more frequent bus service and they're analyzing even whether they can make riding the bus free for everyone and while we're excited the cities brought back the shared e-bikes and note that the station that's less than a block away from this property is getting a lot of use so and we'd like there to be more there because it's really getting used but and and we also are committed to providing one or more shared vehicles with the shared vehicle program so and a lot of us on our team live this way it's not just aspirational we have multiple members of our development team that don't own a car that don't drive my family owns a car and I use it about once a week because I go everywhere by bike so it always a little bit surprises me when people ride in the appeal that people can't get groceries by bike because I do very regularly last time I was at Costco actually with my bike trailer I was not the only one there were two people who were retired seniors who live on the Upper West Side who were at Costco by bicycle I was excited to see that so it's something that's a strength in our community it's growing now that's not right for everyone but that is also why we look at also how we manage this property we're not developing and selling this the church is not developing and selling it we're both involved permanently and for the long term and so some of these units are going to have preferences for folks who don't own cars at the time they apply to live there so that's a legal thing to do that you can verify with applicants and so we're committed to making sure there's parking for church events I don't know said explicitly tonight but I know it's in your written materials that historically the church has rented a lot of parking spots to students and the concept of this project from early on has been not to do that anymore but have that parking available for residents so there has been excess parking capacity relative to church use and events and the preschool use and so now that can be the potential residential use but our goal is that when this is measured after completion there's a lot fewer than 26 trips per in a peak p.m. hour in this trip and we're really trying to think of all the angles about how to bring that about so I want to say that's that's something it's not just like oh we couldn't fit in parking so we don't have much parking in this or ab 2097 so we don't have to build parking this is really like this is a part of our mission and we spend a lot of time on it also because it was brought up I want to say that absolutely correct that we that the geology in this location is a serious matter and that is one of the things we got on first at some of the first money we spent on this project was doing those early stage investigations both geology and geotech and getting the recommendations based on that for the setback from the cliffs and we have actually we don't have entitlement of that of this project yet we're you know here seeking that approval from the city to get planning permit but we've already started spending money on those next geotechnical studies so that we're just mentioned we know they're needed we're really think it's one of the most critical things to make sure this building is going to last a very long time and be safe we completely agree with that concern so we've already actually done the borings with the geologist on site during that for this next phase to geotechnical and geological study we're bugging them to get the study back we can't wait but the point is yes that's a very serious matter and we've taken it seriously from the beginning we're already doing more of those studies before we're even ready to do any of the rest of the design of the building and the way part of that while we see it we did the first studies to make sure a project can happen here and we became confident of that okay from a geological point of view there's not big karst formations under here a project can happen here now we're doing it to see what is the design of the foundation have to be or other little details on the project have to be to understand cost because cost you know it's so challenging today to build buildings with costs where they are that we feel like oh we got to get ahead of the game for the building permit application and understand the foundation the costs were already in that in that geological and geotechnical investigation so that that I wanted to bring up so as far as other things there were two other things I'll comment on that they've been brought up in the appeal I'm a little surprised on the density concern about the relative to the general plan and the base density allowed because it seems like it would be acknowledged that if we weren't splitting the lot if we were leaving at 5.9 acres that yes this 40 units is less than the unit per 10,000 square feet base density of the general plan so that seems fine but then because we're splitting the lot then somehow that's just a big concern so we've been just trying in good faith to say yes we want for a lot of other management reasons and stuff we want to split the lot we want to make sure that access is permanently recorded we want to make sure the density is handled relative to that so there's no future concern I think that was only 10 minutes but it's 12 so far but I had 20 right it was 20 further we didn't define it for you let's do 15 does that sound like yeah only a couple more minutes but I was Santa head there was 20 further there for each side but anyway the the so you know and if we started now we could under but we could use bonus density right we could use the density bonus that we're qualifying for and so we could do the 40 units on the two acre parcel could walk you through how we do that but we just think I don't think there's a big issue we just got to properly record it so that that density has clearly been used across the 5.9 acres but so that was that topic and then briefly I agree that my best look at it is the that I would expect in in the peace united church it has a lot of say in how this is managed it is a vision of having as a community with connections to the events that go on there to the church to the school etc and so from the beginning we've been talking for years about how this can be managed and and to make sure that it's not overcrowded and to make sure that that is done well and so we do target and anticipate as I look at it those policies are going to get us to a range of 100 maybe up to 110 people living there at any given time but to be clear the VMT analysis is about how long how much driving does any given person who lives in that area do and this is a lower VMT area than many parts of the county because this is a place people are driving to so I just wanted to clarify some of those points that that came up leave it at that we've got a long ways to go still on this project and more things to figure out but we're excited at this point and we hope we can move forward thank you thanks hold on let me just hear from staff yeah I wanted to respond quickly to thank you to Mr. Tardiff's comments regarding the geological I took a look at it it does look like there was a recommendation for the geologist to be on site during construction activities so just want to thank Mr. Tardiff for bringing that to our attention so I think this could be resolved with an additional condition of approval just reflecting that recommendation um I expect the applicant would be amenable to that um considering that it sounds like they're yeah they're already okay great so yeah then then we can just include that as a recommended condition could we just see it up on the screen for everybody here and yeah maybe if Tess can can turn the screen up I have it up thanks for your patience okay thanks just so everybody you can see it and the other added conditions of approval were number 45 46 47 and then the new one we have in front of us correct 56 I think yes that's correct 44 45 46 47 and 56 I'll I'll make sure that the numbering all makes sense in the recommendation got it thank you hey good evening my name is Jeff Oberman I am a resident taxpayer actually within five doors of the property on high street I appreciate the pastor I appreciate everybody standing up I'm going to do a little challenge here though how many people please stand up if you currently have a child walking to coastal community preschool or west lake okay we've got one okay I am here for safety and I have extreme concerns on the number that was related earlier this evening from the city that there have only been 18 incidents and two accidents within the past 12 months I can relate except for being out of commission with a hippo place in the last two weeks there are every single morning there is a running of the red light at the more and high street and there was an incident three weeks ago where an e-bike was hit by a car exiting westbound onto high street I was a witness to that is a much higher number of incidents I also agree with the appellant on the challenge of having a police officer stationed both drop-off and pickup pickup times are 12 to in 430 it's very scattered there has to be a safety analysis in the VMT study as far as I know was not done during the school year and I just can't I know we have traffic safety representatives in the audience this evening and I am okay with the mission of the church I'm okay with those from inside the community and beyond the community that are here this evening in the challenge before in the planning commission it just has to be done right these are children that speed limit is exceeded constantly and we need additional measures on high street as a part of this solution that's my request thank you my name is Ethan Miller I'm actually a resident of calcar drive which is right around the corner and I wanted to address parking in particular given the that what the church representatives just said and given what their purpose is I'm very shocked that the planning commission is planning to allow residents to get parking permits there simply isn't enough on-street parking to supply you know parking for 100 vehicles which almost certainly will happen and given what they've said they want not to have vehicles there we don't want to have the extra vehicles filling the streets it was mentioned that we don't complain about what happens at the churches I can tell you that every Wednesday morning and I know that this is high this is high street community church not not peace united there is a bible study group and calcar drive is full of cars for the entire morning I bring this up because the number of car because it's clear from the development they don't care about parking they say they don't need parking then let's take them up on it and please prevent the residents of these units from getting on-street parking permits there isn't enough parking within three blocks to support that kind of thing and I will also point out that's a question of fairness when our houses were built we were required to have driveways garages for I believe three cars per unit if I'm not mistaken can you guys correct me is that is that number correct for single-family homes I have no idea only two two or three my point is that we were required to do that and now what you're asking the residents to do is to subsidize parking for the residents of a place that is not parking on street yes you are to subsidize parking for people for whom they've decided they don't need to pay for the parking themselves so what I'm saying is they've decided that it's not a big issue for them not to have cars and I'm simply saying we should take them up on it if you don't you will have a problem on the nearby streets as the residents will all be driving cars I don't care what they say it's going to happen so I would urge you to restrict parking permits for the residents could everyone please line up on that side thanks good evening chair Kennedy and members of commission my name is Ken Thomas I'm a member of peace united church of christ located at 900 high street where the project is located I'm also a copa leader copa is an organization that was founded in 2003 it's not it's a nonprofit nonpartisan organization it stands for communities organized for relational power and action we've organized various institutions in the Monterey Bay area Monterey County San Benito and Santa Cruz County I think our membership now is 30 institutions it includes labor associations schools non-profits health clinics and faith communities I'm here to speak in favor of the project and hopefully denial of the appeal I find I think through the staff presentation that you found that the project is consistent with the zoning ordinance and the general plan no environmental impacts were identified it's consistent or excuse me it's it's an infill project it's located near a transit stop plus a major corridor it's nearby a major employer of the county of the city and it also furthers the goals and objectives of the housing element that draft element that you recommended the other about two weeks ago to the city council and most importantly it provides housing and this has been a recurring story that I've heard in 20 years about the need for affordable housing not only is it new housing but it's affordable housing I think that's the most important thing and I urge your support for the project and denial of the appeal thank you for your patience yeah and just to note it's optional but if you do want to leave your name it really helps test transcribe people's names correctly for the record good evening missioners my name's lisa hazing I've been an active member at peace you cc since the early 1980s I've also lived on the west side that whole time I'm currently the moderator of our church which is a kind of a lay leader um for the last like six years I've been involved in meetings where we've discussed this project and we are so excited because it will bring a wider community to our campus and it supports our social justice mission which is a very important mission to us it supports it by providing affordable housing for middle low and very low income earners and is a great benefit to the upper west side neighborhood and city we have used our almost six acre campus for many many things and when we finally decided to build we realized it was the right thing to do please do approve our permit and please do deny the appeal thank you for approving this well planned and well played prayed for project hi my name is Sharon and I have been the crossing guard at westlake elementary school for the past four years thank you for giving me a chance to speak tonight about the situation I see five days a week at the intersection of high street and more there are a lot of people coming in from three directions to get to and from the school cars scooters bikes skateboard school buses and a lot of pedestrians all of this goes on during the middle of heavy morning and afternoon traffic in both directions I am here during my time at this intersection I've seen all sorts of crazy driving resulting in daily near misses for example one time I was in the crosswalk and was passed by drivers on both sides of the street running the red light another time I was threatened by a guy in a car for stopping him from driving through the crosswalk with people in it here's what I see every day I see several red light runners and I mean red not yellow I that even happens when I'm in the crosswalk almost no one follows the speed limit I would say 35 45 miles per hour in a 25 mile an hour school zone is a conservative estimate in my informed observation the heavier the traffic gets the more aggressive and careless the drivers get I think we've been very lucky to avoid injuries and fatalities in conclusion the danger created now by traffic is highly unacceptable and we if we add more pressure from an apartment complex next door without a real solution for fixing the traffic we are just inviting tragedy thank you for hearing me evening commissioners my name is Andrew Merriam I'm a high street resident it's my feeling that this otherwise laudable project is being shoehorned into the wrong location with many fundamental but unrealistic expectations that are going to come to haunt us all if the project is allowed to continue as it in its current form this time is short I would like to focus on one example which is vehicle use and the the number of cars that this project will actually introduce in our appeal we pointed out that this project violates a provision of the city's general plan to quote encourage land use changes that reduce the need for automobiles apparently the developers hope to encourage that reduction in auto use providing by providing just 20 spaces for about 150 tenants in their response to the appeal staff defended this plan and suggested that quote those who are deterred by a lack of on-site parking will likely opt not to rent a unit at this apartment the best thing I can say about that comment is that it's highly aspirational I mean who wouldn't want to cut the ties to their car but hold on who is going to give up their vehicle to live here this is not San Francisco this is not one of the new developments in the the right lights of downtown where transit is sparse but everything is in walking distance this is the middle of nowhere relatively in suburbia which is one or two steep hills up from the necessary services that the people will use our local market is the 711 on Cardiff which has a good beer selection but have you bought eggs there recently the closest thing we have to a restaurant is the rolling hot dog rack at said 711 next door to the 711 staff has hopefully highlighted a laundromat used also by the tenants in the adjoining apartments I will skip down if you're gonna finish your thoughts that'd be great thank you thank you sir people are going to look at tenants are going to take one look at the situation say we need we need our car we're going to be adding a lot of new vehicles to an area that's already overloaded at least three times a day doesn't matter if it's internal combustion or electric engines they will diffuse into the neighborhood streets for both for parking and to avoid the the daily traffic jams please let's ditch the fiction that this will be a car free apartment and revise the project and it's anticipated impacts accordingly thank you hi welcome hello my name is Andrew Al I attended Westlake elementary school my son currently attends Westlake elementary school we live on a state's drive and my wife or I walk him to and from school each day I'm also a member of the board of new way homes I urge you to please reject the appeal and approve the project um I disagree with my neighbors respectfully I think and I love Sharon and what she does as a crossing guard for our school but um we have a wonderful neighborhood and I think we need to share it with more people the biggest issues I think in our city are caused by a lack of housing and we need to address that and you know respectfully to again to some of my neighbors my family has one car for two adults and a child many of my neighbors have two adults and four cars it's very possible to have one car an e-bike to walk to take the bus um and it's very very possible and I think can and will be done so please um let's get some more housing built thank you good evening steam commission planning commissions my name is Elaine Johnson and I'm the executive director of housing Santa Cruz county I am here to express my enthusiastic support for the peace village project which is currently in consideration in front of us I believe that the peace village project aligns with our community's needs and values particularly in addressing the pressing issue of housing affordability the thoughtful planning and design of this project reflect a commitment to creating a vibrant inclusive community that benefits both current and future residents I applaud the efforts of the development team in working collaboratively with the community to address concerns I firmly believe that approving the project will contribute significantly to our community's growth and resilience by providing diverse housing options this project not only meets the needs of residents but also contributes to the overall economic and social vitality of this city I respectfully urge the planning commission to support and approve the peace village project this project represents a positive step forward in addressing our community's housing challenges and fostering a more inclusive thriving city for us all thank you my name is Bill Lee I live on Bradley Drive I oppose the project I support everything everybody has said in opposition to the project thank you very much well he barely gave me any time for preparation here my name is John Hall I am a resident of the Upper West Side I am a member of Peace Church I want to thank the city staff for all the work that they've done on this project I want to thank the members of the planning commission the zoning administrator it has been great to work with the city on this project I'm part of the housing implementation project team it started working on this six and a half or seven years ago it's been a long effort it's been a volunteer effort by everybody who's working on it at the church I think that's important to recognize that we're not in here for anything but what we believe in in our faith for the betterment of the community now I don't think that you as a planning commission should take religion into account in making your decisions you have the ordinances in front of you but I do think that community institutions are important and if you look at the community institutions that are part of the city of the Santa Cruz and this congregation has been here since 1857 churches are important parts of the community institutions for what we do you look at what the Episcopal church has done downtown that's a very important thing nonprofits are important in developing affordable housing and we as an institution not just a religious institution but an institution I think is central to our community have stepped up how many community institutions are there that can do this I ask you we're here we're ready to do it and I want to just conclude by saying we're the first neighbors we're the first neighbors of the people who are going to be part of living and peace village we have every interest in making it safe I had two daughters that went through Westlake Elementary School and they're now in college or beyond but safety is crucial it's crucial to us as a congregation it will be crucial to the people who live there one final thought I've talked to people at both the coastal community preschool and Westlake staff and teachers there are people in both of those places who would like to live in this development I ask you to approve the project reject the appeal thank you hi my name is Susan this will wait and I did in fact write this will wait down because it's not that easy I am a new resident my husband and I moved here in June of this year of Santa Cruz and we joined peace united church of Christ I want to make a case for this benefiting the community economically you stand in line and line and line and line and when you finally get to the counter the people say oh we'd hire more people but there's nowhere for them to live a woman down the street from us in our new neighborhoods said I'd love to have my adult children and the grandchildren live here but there's nowhere for them to live and there is obviously a generational divide in our communities and finally this is what decent communities do they take care of our neighbors and I agree with John very much we're stepping up we're trying to help it's not everything but it is the decent community that embraces innovative plans to get these people housed thank you my name is George I was born in Santa Cruz 80 years ago I've lived on the west side for 48 years and I love Santa Cruz I am involved with lots of things in the community and our biggest the biggest thing that we should provide is housing peace village is the perfect place and this project is the perfect project for years and years these types of projects have been turned down and I feel that if for the past 50 years a few of these would have been passed every every year then I think that we wouldn't have the problem that we have we might still have it but we would have done what we could and I think that we should do what we can now please support this project please pass it thank you hello commissioners my name is Zenin Elliott Crow I'm a third year at UC Santa Cruz and founder of the UCSC student housing coalition I just wanted to come out here tonight in strong support of the project and urging you guys to please reject the appeal I think one thing that's really crucial is when we think about housing in Santa Cruz is that we often have a geographic inequity when it comes to where new housing is built especially as it relates to having housing near campus where we know there are thousands of people that are daily working going to school etc in this area and so we've seen that a lot of the brunts of building more housing which we know is necessary to combat the housing crisis has been located either in downtown or in other areas and typically located in low-income communities and so I think when we think about the peace united church project it's a really important step towards showing that actually we should be equitably distributing our housing growth across the city and we should be placing housing in places that are near job centers I mean UCSC is the you know largest job center in the place and so I really I really implore the commission to look at projects like this as rather than adding commuters to the roads it's turning commuters into neighbors instead of having folks that are commuting in from miles and miles away I mean I knew a student actually so I was on the housing search right now and I was just in class looking up housing and the person behind me was like oh you're on the housing search I'm like yeah I'm looking for some stuff and he's like oh man I couldn't find housing for two quarters so I commuted every single day for my parents house in Foster City and then came to Santa Cruz and this is just a random student that was in my class sitting behind me watching me do this and I think about that story that's the one that I know about because I'm talking to my friend in class but there are thousands of students that are either literally homeless or commuting in ordained distances because they can't afford to live next to university because there's no housing next to university and so I think that when we talk about this project we talk about projects like it that are building housing next to these centers we are converting people that otherwise would be driving from in ordained distances away to then live in the communities that we thrive in so I really encourage you guys to please support the project and reject the appeal thank you. Hi commissioners my name is Nicholas Robles I'm also on the behalf of the student housing coalition and I would like to support I mean reject the appeal sorry I can't be but um I just want to speak on the behalf of the UCSC students and myself also knowing that what I went through to try and find housing this year was really difficult it was it was really sad for me to know that the housing market over here was completely inaccessible for me I couldn't find housing on the day that we were moving out of school when I was still on campus and I had to leave and pick a really expensive option that was to even to me right now it's still really expensive for me to try and pay for it and so knowing that and knowing that it's going to get worse next year because UCSC is not allowing sophomores to have confirmed housing anymore is I just know that it's going to be worse and so if we get more housing confirmed for students or for the Santa Cruz residents in general that would be really helpful thank you. Hello commissioners my name's Olivia Brebs and I'm here with the UC Santa Cruz on behalf of the student housing coalition and I just wanted to speak to you today as someone who's very aware of the what was already referred to as the generational gap between what's available to students especially of the younger generation versus what was afforded to people who came before us and one of the most important things that I believe in is being able to preserve these areas for incoming students and for future generations and we're not going to be able to effectively do that if each time an appeal comes up it means an entire project is rejected and the whole process starts over again for the people who are in dire need of housing now and that need will only increase as a student housing crisis grows so I really urge you to reject this appeal thank you. Hello my name is Bella Snyder I'm a student at UC Santa Cruz and I support this project and urge you to reject the appeal because I see how a project like this would have impacted me as a student in these past three years I've worked hard to graduate two quarters early just so I can leave and find a city that's affordable and so I'd have to pay insane rent prices that also would have afforded me the opportunity to live near campus where I don't have to commute with my car every single day onto campus which would have been great for myself and my car mileage I also think it's important in order to address the inequities that I see on campus and how UC Santa Cruz is becoming this institution that can only support with dignity students who come from rich backgrounds and it doesn't have the opportunity for students who don't have parents who can help them pay two thousand a month for a shared room four miles away from campus that's it. Hi my name is Natalia Gray I'm a recent graduate from UC Santa Cruz I urge you to reject the appeal and support the the development of affordable housing because I as a student have struggled myself finding housing so the first kind of problem I found with that is that the availability of housing in Santa Cruz is like really dismal there's not enough for students and just for people who want to live in Santa Cruz I'm seeing that now as someone who's had to find a different city to live in that's more affordable I would have loved to stay like Santa Cruz is an amazing place and there's really just not a space for me here that I can afford or that I could find so I think building affordable housing would not only help the new generations of students coming into Santa Cruz but also the existing residents be able to stay here and live and build families here. Hi my name is Pat O'Brien and I am a neighbor of the church I just wanted to point out a couple of things just because you don't own a car does not mean you don't hire Lyft and Uber and get things delivered by Prime and FedEx so there will still be traffic thanks to online access with regards to incidents on High Street I've walked my children to and from Westlake and all sorts of events many times I was the head of the soccer league here in the county and I've witnessed lots of accidents and police were never called bicyclists were hit children were hit if the cops aren't called they're not documented so you have no record so statistically you have to have a little adjustment there a lot of times insurance is exchanged and people drive off so you have no record of that and lastly on your stipulations for construction traffic High Street already prohibits trucks it's rarely enforced but it is prohibited so you might strengthen language on your stipulation thank you good evening my name is Rafa Salamfeld I'm here on behalf of Santa Cruz EMB in strong support of the project urging you to reject the appeal Santa Cruz EMB advocates for more housing at all levels of income in Santa Cruz and we we help organize letters in support of this project that's before you this evening it's just really heartening to see so many other folks in the community coming out tonight as well it's a little unusual for us to have a clear majority of in-person supporters in in council chambers and just seeing so many folks here from COPA from Peace United and elsewhere in the community it's it's just really really satisfying to know that that so many people care so deeply about about this issue and came out tonight to support this project I hope that that this sort of thing continues in the future it's really important for folks to to be advocating for folks who can't be here because they can't afford to live here can't afford to be away from their family and so yeah just thank you for doing what you do and happy to see this project move forward thank you good evening commissioners my name is phil hotston i live on the west side of Santa Cruz for the past 10 years and i'm a member of holy cross catholic church i wanted to give you a concrete example of what the lack of community housing is doing to our community and in my own family i have a youngest daughter who's in her fourth year of medical school and she had a four week rotation as part of the fourth year down at the Watsonville community hospital she commuted from my home on the west side and we had a little spreadsheet discussion about hey wouldn't it be cool if you live in Santa Cruz close to your family wouldn't that be a wonderful thing you're going to be a pediatrician you're going to be a doctor you're going to be making relatively good money won't this be a wonderful thing and she said dad i'll be 300 thousand dollars in debt by the time i'm out and as a resident residency programs which she is eligible for march stanford is looking at her they're interviewing her she says i'll make 65 thousand dollars a year i won't be able to afford to live in Santa Cruz and if you if you apply the student loans i can't live there without low-cost housing even aspiring doctors who are servicing our community and our children can't afford to live here we have to think about what our community is all about as we move forward into the future so i urge you to approve this project thank you good evening commissioners thank you for your time my name is ryan mechel i'm a young renter in the city of santa cruz and it is not easy i just want to talk briefly about how the housing crisis here has affected me as a ucsc student and now somebody who both lives and works in the city um there's simply not enough options for people like me to continue living here you heard it from some of the youngest people speaking today some of the students that they are going to leave and they're trying to graduate early so they can leave santa cruz and not have to pay these exorbitant costs we are losing amazing community members because housing is too expensive here a project like this would give people like them and like me an opportunity to stay in the city to contribute to the city and to build a future here for myself and a future family i don't really see that for myself right now quite frankly i hope you deny this appeal and move this project forward so that people like me continue to live here and contribute to our community thank you hello commissioners i'm ellen fitzschild mirtha thank you so much in advance for your serious consideration i hope that you reject the appeal and move forward on this project i represent santa cruz welcoming network we're an all volunteer organization that assists recent refugees and asylum seekers as they settle here and create a new life free from persecution and violence from their country of origin i myself work with a family from ukraine it is our job as volunteers to try and help them find housing medical care education and work as well as get connected to legal services so they can become citizens and housing is the biggest problem and so you know that it's not news we welcome additional housing particularly in the neighborhoods i love the idea of us being welcoming as a community and saying to this refugee family from ukraine that i work with yes we want you to be our new neighbors thank you good evening everyone my name is bodyshargel i'm speaking on behalf of myself as a renter here in santa cruz a ucsc student and a young person but also as a member of the student housing coalition um i am in strong support of this project and encourage you all to reject this appeal tonight and i'd love to focus on the um transportation and traffic aspect of it because it seems to be a commonly held issue that people have with the project and i'd i'd love to re-emphasize the idea that this this project in the construction of affordable housing doesn't add to traffic it helps with this problem um i live in a two person household me and my girlfriend um we until very recently were one car household uh i had to buy my own car as well rather than us sharing a car because i can't bike to work i can't take the bus to work i work in film right so we need a second car so i can get to work this project will turn people in similar situations to mine uh into people who can take public transit or a bike to work um i in my recently purchased car uh today waited about 20 minutes to a half an hour in traffic on high street going down high street um to get from the ucsc campus to where i live a couple of blocks from here um if we build a whole bunch of affordable housing around the ucsc campus we'll have people who currently have to live in live oak or soquel or watsonville to afford a place to live will allow them to live right here next to the ucsc campus um and and those people right now who are priced out of the city of santa cruz those are the ones creating the traffic going from santa cruz to other parts of the county um where they can afford a place to live and so if we create the ability for people who work at ucsc and work in the city of santa cruz more broadly to live near where they work that opens up a whole bunch of more opportunities for people to get to work and live their lives without a car which is what will help with the traffic that we have to deal with so i'm in strong support of this project i hope you deny the appeal tonight and i appreciate your time thank you good evening my name is dak mara dolachko i'm a five-year resident of santa cruz the previous speaker i don't know if i find her in the audience um note about the ukrainian refugees deeply resonated with me due to my ukrainian heritage and i'm an immigrant to this country myself so i fully support the ideas of affordable housing to this i have a question to the developer if i may i would like to know how many of these 40 units are truly affordable housing if i may ask this question uh no uh staff can answer no but after public comment but i would like to know that because it is my understanding that only a certain number of the 40 units are affordable housing i believe that we should focus on other much larger affordable housing projects to solve this incredible problem and maybe this unit at high street is not the place to focus so much on the affordable housing part but on the overall impact to that part of the community i am sure there are many other places in santa cruz where affordable housing would be much better placed also at the university where they are planning to build i fully applaud that that affordable housing for students is is really needed but this particular place impacts that community to a degree that is underplayed by the developer and by the uh proponents of this project especially in terms of traffic uh providing 20 parking spaces for a unit that can easily house about a hundred people is a little ridiculous thank you so i i would urge to pause the project my name is marshala samon kowa and i live on a calcutt drive so close uh to the church um here on behalf of myself and some of the families that are uh in west leg and uh also um the united church preschool um my concern is i'm also an immigrant in the country and um i you know i totally understand the students and i totally understand uh we need housing and we need to be open to diversity um but this project however i mean we i have three children and we move to the neighborhood to provide a safe environment for our children that can you know bike around and walk around to school and feel safe and already uh the ucsc traffic it's it's been pretty hard but adding additional 40 units 85 bedrooms to the neighborhood uh seems like a like a stretch so um i do appreciate the church um you know um attention intention to actually build more housing and i do appreciate also what new way homes are trying to do uh but i would really like to urge you to pause this project and figure out a way how to make it safer uh and um more appreciated by the neighborhood thank you so much my name is ken rodkey i'm a long time resident of sanacris county and i oppose this project in its current state i agree a pause is in order lower density would be good uh the ingress and egress i feel is inadequate i believe it'll be an overburdenment whether it's bicycles or cars and it has no um fight that i can see has in has no emergency access um furthermore i i see the drainage issues on high street this being a real problem and uh having witnessed this the the west lake pond is a spring fed pond and drainage has been directed from high down through the pond causing um just complete devastation to much of the aquatic life um i understand the project's drainage is going to head toward neary lagoon and west lake pond outfall runs to neary lagoon so i i'm just uh fearful that this will increase the more problems for the lake thank you i thank you commissioners my name is bernard putz i'm a five-year resident of the neighborhood and it's been interesting i've been listening to say i tried to go through the 300 pages of documentation that was submitted and it's fascinating just to see the back and forth in the conflicts and i'm all for affordable housing i think we need it my son actually went to ucsc and we definitely need that work but i guess what struck me today was just the questions that came up for me the the geologic report where it looks like maybe it wasn't done as thoroughly because it is adequate and maybe it was i i'm not the expert on it but i just raised the question for me of like okay what is the impact on those cliffs we hear a lot of residents talking about the traffic i don't know what the traffic i do know that forget pulling out on high street i mean might as well go down the switch back on highland or something because certain times a day that traffic is really bad the kids always see the kids going we have those there's a stop sign there on on highland as well the number of people that run that stop sign when we walk our dogs is abhorrent it's scary so i would just urge the commission to pause it and actually look at some of this additional information get the data that actually supports or denies us i mean i don't know when the traffic analysis was done but was it done during the ucsc academic calendar yeah so that has a huge impact when ucsc lets out and then you've got the cars coming up from highland off the schools so again it's just i guess is the data set complete is there really refutable data that says traffic not a problem we measured it during these three periods of the year because traffic patterns are very different throughout the year and so again i just ask you to to pause get that additional data i can't say that i'm opposed to it or for it at this point because again i think some of the data is missing so thank you very much hello commissioners thank you for your time tonight i'm up here simply to end this on a positive note this is a really important project it's ads housing and the last speaker was just asking what do we know what do we know well what we know is we have a housing crisis and what we know is we have a really good project that fits in with the mission of the church it offers housing in an area that's low density it's a great location for housing it's close to a job it's on a transit it's really a fantastic opportunity to add as one person said to turn commuters into neighbors so let's move this forward let's deny the appeal and thank you very much one more commissioners i'm going last because i can't stand in line back troubles my name is jim weller i am one of the church leaders who was first engaged in envisioning and beginning the development of this project i've been personally involved in it day in and day out for more than six years i'm not going to repeat many of the things that have already been said about the care and and consideration and professionalism that we've put into this project i am going to point out a couple of things that seem to be persistent misunderstandings among some of our neighbors one of those is that on our church campus we presently have 130 developed parking spaces we only need to use about 50 or 60 of them in the past we have rented 70 or so spots to ucsc students when this project is built instead of renting to ucsc students we will rent to residents the same parking spaces the church is providing parking spaces for every resident who wants one they'll be rented to residents on demand there will be plenty of parking spaces for all of the cars that residents own in the project and there will be no impact on parking demand in the neighborhood that's one thing the other thing is that we have we've gone to great lengths to think about and study the traffic pattern on high street especially at the high street moor intersection where the west lake school children cross our project will eliminate exiting traffic from our campus at the moor street high street intersection so there will be no conflict between cars exiting our campus and pedestrians all of our exiting will be a far a thousand nearly a thousand feet it went on a thousand five hundred feet away from west lake elementary school so it's very clear that there will not be an increase in safety hazard to children crossing high street our i don't know whether any of the people who have complained about traffic are traffic engineers but we have had professional traffic engineering studies done which show according to established professional standards that the additional impact of traffic exiting and entering from our project on high street will be insignificant by city of Santa Cruz standards those are the points i want to make and to close i want to just say that in this lengthy process we have worked every step of the way in accordance with our city's planning and building policies and regulations our experience of cooperation and support on the part of the city staff has been commendable city staff have worked through our project plans with an enormous array of considerations we're grateful for that we're most gratified by the staff recommendation for approval in particular we thank our project planner Brittany Whitehill for her diligence and we trust the planning commission will reaffirm approval of our project may god speed our work thank you all right would anyone else like to come up and speak i will then close the public comment period and bring that in back to the commission for more discussion and action commissioner dozen yeah i'd like to put a motion on the table and then we can have discussion about it so i'd like to move that we deny the appeal and uphold the zoning administrator acknowledgement of the environmental determination approval of the minor land division design permit slope development permit density bonus requests inherited stream removal permit based on the findings listed below and the condition of the approvals listed in exhibit a of the staff report with the addition of condition 56 and the change in language for condition 44 so it's actually going to be with two new conditions it's 56 and 57 okay with two new conditions 56 and 57 so i'd like to put that motion on the floor and hopefully get a second and then we can go to discussion do you have a second yeah i just want to make sure i heard that right which i'm pretty sure i did so we just turned the condition of approval number 44 and made that number 57 just for correct just so we didn't have a simple process right okay i was wondering about the number eight two that was going to start to bother me so i'll second all right more discussion i just had a couple questions one of them is for the developer and i just had a question around parking and the lower lot i just wondering if there's some sort of a plan for that because it seems like there's the 20 parking spaces up above and then there's the big lower lot and i know that there's a lot of concerns in the neighborhood about parking overflow and things like this and i'm just wondering if any thoughts would give into that or anything you had to say yes please come on up yeah we have a lot of thought about it and work with the church on that and we want to make sure there's still parking in the upper lot for folks coming to church and events as well in particular so we anticipate the bulk of the parking for residents will be in the lower lot and designated spots for residents many of them who get their own designated parking spot if they have a car that is their spot in the way that's done with students right now and then there are some accessible parking spots some drop-off spot unloading spots etc that can be right at the residential building to facilitate making that easier that your parking spots a little ways down the hill for your you know general residential spot so we're going to be continuing to fine tune that but when we were laying out the project we wanted to use some of the space and the fact we're widening the driveway for emergency vehicles and different things to add those parking spots so it is a little confusing because we're at we're creating those 20 spots as a part of the development but those are not the only spots for residents and in fact tentatively we're looking at some of those spots being some of the best spots for events and church access right but as Mr. Weller was saying you know there's on the order of 60 spots that are going to be a discontinued use that we can prioritize for residents all over and you know I'll just say to the gentleman I think it's not here anymore about parking in the neighborhood I'm on the same page with him I years ago went to public works and said we're fine if people who live at this address are not eligible for the parking permits in the area they didn't have a way to make that happen but first in the future you know etc because we're we are providing more parking as we said you know what I think he misunderstood the number spots for residents as a part of that we are providing more parking and we're committed to keeping the need for parking low so we we don't want people parking up the neighborhood either great yeah it's just with the church use at night and during the day there's just a lot going on in that space and yeah I was just curious about that one thing that was alluded to but not fully said is that there is this long-standing agreement with Westlake Elementary because the church events dovetail really well with school use so there is at pickup drop-off times or staff can use a few spots a limited number of spots on the peace united church campus during school time because that's not when hardly any events are going on sometimes there's meetings and stuff but that's not when the big events and maintenance are happening and conversely like on Easter Sunday when more people are coming to church they can park in the Westlake Elementary school when the Westlake comes and opens the gate to campus to allow that so that's a wonderful overflow for these peak event kind of stuff great and then um you should probably come back sorry sibling uh corrected apparently the pastor has a key to the parking lot next door yeah you know I think that um if it's not anyone with the key yeah if it's not broke don't mess with it and if you have community agreements going on and it's not a problem then great that's that's good enough for me um second thing and maybe I missed this in the conditions of approval or maybe I missed it in the staff report but I didn't see anything about onsite management of the rental rentals we are legally required any new apartment building being created now in california that's 16 units or greater has to have an onsite managers unit that someone lives in with certain responsibilities so we will be having that be a manager's unit probably one of the two bedrooms uh units uh in this development um but we'll also have uh you know professional property management staff that are coming and handling other functions as well great awesome um okay I'll hold my questions there I do some comments but um we'll do that later when other commissioners ask questions all right commissioner micovi um I'd like to ask um what the um ci projects that were mentioned in that area um in terms of traffic are yes so um and and matt starkey is here he may be able to to speak more aptly to those hi good evening matt starkey your transportation manager public works uh the cip projects in the area are focused on the bay corridor at this moment one of them on the list has been a long-standing intersection improvement project for bay at high then we also have a corridor improvement along bay where we're working on improving a separated bike lane network from ucsc all the way down to um west cliff drive and do you feel that the bay high street capital improvement project that you're referring to is going to address all of the letters and the concerns that we've heard here tonight that's kind of a complicated question because um we don't have any concerns about the traffic um coming to the site it did not um achieve the 50 trip threshold to raise any concerns for traffic analysis what we are working on on the the bay street corridor and at high street is um i think fits really well in with the vmt framework that's being talked about where we provide alternative transportation access to help reduce vehicles that miles traveled analysis so i i would say generally yes it does sort of support the concerns here where we're trying to provide alternative modes for people in this area and i i know that is a complicated question but we've heard from people that are like living it every day versus a you know an analysis or a algorithm these are people that are living this every day and so as community you know members and as people on the commission we have to take that into consideration as a real lived experience for people so um yeah so i guess i'm trying to understand how the you know algorithm that we're evaluating this from is really addressing these people's lived experiences so yeah i think the um it actually would turn our attention away from the cip for some of these concerns that were brought up i think they more to do with neighborhood traffic calming concerns particularly speeding on high street uh we have uh coming out this uh december we're going to have a call for projects for a neighborhood traffic calming program where um residents can petition my department to provide traffic calming devices we have a one-time budget of 75 000 and they're going to be looking to install that around the city um in the new year so i think people look out for um press release on that and the neighborhood groups that are here would be really great candidates to apply for that just one more thing on that just because it's such a big topic for this community um is there is there an avenue for traffic calming analysis or problem solving to be a part of conditions of approval in a project so i would say because the project does not trigger you know there's an objective adopted threshold this 50 pm peak hour um if that were to be triggered at that point the traffic impact study would be required and they would have needed to do that prior to prior to getting to this state since it's below the adopted threshold um the you know the the standard course of action is to require payment of the traffic impact fee understood um i guess more specifically my question would be is there any legal repercussions if we were to discuss that as being an option despite the fact that they didn't hit that 50 threshold i i would say it could be argued to be a violation of sb 330 um we really you know we need to adhere to the submittal requirements for projects that are on our submittal checklists um and and we have no authority to sort of require items to be submitted that there's not an adopted requirement for i think if if you were to have something in mind um that would be acceptable public works and the applicant then that uh legal standard uh issue could be avoided you you recently saw that with the 1800 sokel project yeah like a specific amount or we want x number of speed bumps or whatever um i would add i would add on one tool that we have a new tool we're going to have is the way we adopt speed limits in the city the state law has changed um where we can use lower speed limits in areas where there's dense or residential development and so i i actually have to review our speed limits every seven years and that's coming up pretty soon and so i fully intended our new application of these new speed law speed limit laws and standards that we're going to relook at some of these corridors like high street that have a 30 mile per hour speed limit um where that's really not a great um great speed for that road given the uses that we have out there today so there are there are opportunities coming to improve the conditions on high street they're not necessarily the responsibility of the developer per our standards that we have but they're actually more my responsibility as the person in public works don't go anywhere i think commissioner doson your question is answered so i don't want to spend all night but you know i started as a planning commissioner under level of service which i detest and now we're in you know vehicle uh vehicle miles traveled which i love but i feel like a lot of people get a lot people i talk to around town get confused about what vehicle miles traveled is and i see it as like this kind of big computer model of housing and jobs and not about this one project can you just like in two minutes kind of remind us all like how vmt works i'm sorry um yeah this is like uh probably take like a master's degree class on this um yeah i think the simplest way to think about vmt is the two parts the vehicles the miles traveled um and compare it maybe to me in this area to how ucsc was developed a long time ago um in the level of service framework so when we used to do development review for transportation we only considered um the amount of vehicle throughput that you could have and so to solve your environmental challenges then you could just build bigger roads um which then increases more traffic um but what happens with the vmt framework is you change you change the way you're thinking about it you're looking for ways that could reduce the vehicles and so that's maybe putting a development next to a good transit service um let's put in development next to where song can walk um order looking at um that distance part uh the miles traveled piece so again proximity is more important so it creates this new new more holistic way um to look at transportation as an impact the reason vmt is a really great measure of that it's because we know that it's uh correlated with um greenhouse gas emissions we know that's correlated with um crashes and accidents that people um experience so safety so it's a much better metric to more holistically look at um the way we travel and the impacts that has on our environment okay so it does a better job at capturing modes of transit that are not driving a big car uh thanks for going through that one more time any other questions for matt oh thank you please approach the dais um is the project taking advantage of any of the parking reduction measures that are allowed with complementary use and bicycle substitution and well any of those um yes um so the most extraordinary you reduction in the requirement is the ab 2097 that's new this year right so that nearly eliminates the parking requirement do you have electrical vehicle charging spaces and accessible spaces um so and in absence of that we we applied while we were deemed complete in january that was in effect already we applied before well that was passed it hadn't gone in effect yet and there were other tools the bonus density reduction in in parking requirement or um the church housing parking bill there's specific bill about churches and housing and parking and um that allows a certain degree of sharing between church use and and you so we've been looking for years at that and and taking advantage of that but what really it is is like yeah especially because of 2097 it means oh there's not some just average requirement that we have to meet we were looking at the project and saying what do we what do we want to target as goal but then what do we want to make sure to have available in case it's needed and available in case it's needed we said well the church is to make this viable the church needs to agree not to rent park spot parking spots to students anymore because there that is you know um 1.5 spots per unit right there okay that's a pool in case it's needed and then that's great bank that then we're going to do everything we can to reduce the demand from this to well below that if possible so that's been our approach we yes there's a tool there the state law that kind of took the requirement off the table and then we were able to study well what do we what's the range of what might be needed aspirational where do we want to get to and in case it's needed how much do we need to have so part of my question is in the pre 2097 yeah world aren't we already it's 90 how many spaces 90 something provided well there's going to be 100 at least 117 on the two parcels in total the preschool needs 12 then there's the church use right and and there's a formula for that based on space in the church itself and so and then you can do some degree of sharing so this is my point just even if even if the current if though if the new the the laws you know kind of obviating any parking yes hadn't been passed wouldn't this be close to passing under the old regime anyway we designed this without 2097 and believed we were complying with the state and local ordinances previous to January 1st of this year yes and so it is our belief is applicants and we didn't change anything based on 2097 come into place that this was already meeting the requirements then so and maybe this isn't your daily work but similar in a similar vein if the church was developing it developing this housing project on this on a single site and it wasn't subdivided I know that there's some limitations on the uses but wouldn't the density the allowable density be higher than what's being proposed here yes okay so maybe this is a question for you I know that the the I'm I'm bothered by the form of the building I know this isn't a design review but are you thinking this is going to be a modular construction mode no no it's it's and look here's the thing we the just to something I want to say on that we're going to keep working on the exterior look a bit right we went for the form and it is quite challenging with slopes geotechnical all that so we went for a very simple form mm-hmm we are the rules for what we needed to submit for this project did not include a final palette for the look and exterior so we have not we haven't even discussed with the architects yet that kind of some of those things that will affect the look but because of the slopes in particular it's not I love modular but the access to the site and the slopes and stuff does not couldn't really do modular in this case I was assuming that you were being limited by that but I understand that it's being clear that I'm just we're just seeing a lot of these projects come through and they are an inspired insert word just it just lack of imagination articulation it's it's I don't know that there's yeah and I and I understand that you're saying that you haven't figured out all the details and things but in the language of the the conditions of approval it says that the building will not vary from what we're approving here and you know there are finishes in in the dry no those are sample finishes we haven't really established finishes yet I haven't we haven't even talked with the design team really about they put standard examples in there but our submission requirements did not include didn't that and our ability to require anything else is limited right it's just that we care about that the church cares a lot about the aesthetics of it too this is a site where it is a little hard to represent I actually think the design from where you're entering it and the church is a little better than it looks when you're just seeing the model of the building from a vantage point that no one will actually see hovering up in space but and there's a lot and we're more interested in landscaping that also changed the look a lot there's a very significant number of trees that we need to plant under the requirements for just as one example so I think there's a lot we're going to do that is going to affect what looks on paper like a box but we have a lot of work to do yet on that and we don't feel that we can go through a lot of that design until we know that we're allowed to build it I understand yeah all right more questions more discussion Commissioner Dawson I just had a couple comments so I don't think they're questions so simply you could say if you want but they might turn into them so I just wanted to thank the public for everybody coming out and I will say that most of the time I don't agree with my colleagues up here but I do know that we all take our service very seriously and that we all read everything that came in all 324 pages worth and so and we listen to all the testimony so I really I know that it takes everybody's time to do that and so I want to really want to appreciate the community for coming out for that and I just wanted to make a couple general comments in the appellants video something really stood out to me that I did want to just make a comment about and the appellant said that she called them protections that were in the general plan that they've been explained away but I just want to again emphasize that what are called protections in the general plan they've been legislated away and you'll hear from the planning staff and you'll hear from others that you've heard about these laws and and and we are bound by those laws state laws is going to trump our municipal code and it's going to trump our general plan and it's going to continue to do that so I just want to encourage the neighbors to continue to ask questions about them but also just understand that those state laws that your state legislators that you elect you know those are those are governing what we do at this municipal level in a way that has never happened in the past and so that's just something important to keep in mind as a community it was I really want to appreciate Commissioner Timery for bringing up that traffic calming and that's something I think that we all as community members should continue to advocate at the city council level to we know that there are corridors that are you know very dangerous and with this intensification and densification they're going to get more so so I think we all should continue to try to advocate where we can for that traffic calming and I just want to appreciate the comments about putting housing where we need it you've heard it from many folks tonight about UCSC being the biggest employer student enrollment numbers going up I personally live on the east side and we do need housing all over the city but we need to allocate it fairly and this is a wonderful location for a project and I just want to appreciate all the work and again appreciate everybody for coming out tonight so thank you I'd like to add on to that just because we all have our areas of expertise is that one of the things that that are out of our control is that this project was done before the objective standards were in place within the city and so as architects and designers you know sitting up here we don't there's not really much to say about it because we because it just has to be what it is so the the planning staff you know and zoning administration have worked with this project for many years and worked with them through this and we trust that you know if something is within their control and they need our assistance with that they come to us and we support them but we do have very little in some of these projects that we can really participate in so I think it's important that the community knows that that that that that this is what we're dealing with so right Julie I wasn't actually expecting to have a chance to comment on this project so I because I didn't expect it to come to the planning commission but I am really really happy to have a chance to congratulate the development team to thank the church for its vision and commitment to the community and it is so much work to get a project to the point where it where it's a complete application it costs a lot of money there's so many studies done and I also want to address the you know real concerns of neighbors too who don't always who haven't looked at a lot of projects and know that there's a lot of study to get to the point where you invest what you've had to invest to get started and that there's a lot more study that needs to happen through the development process but I want to thank you and congratulate you for getting it this far I also want to thank staff I think you just did a really bang up job on a lot of really complicated facts and and clarifying questions that I know continue to be hard to understand I also want to thank the community for coming out you know for being really engaged a lot of people did a really deep dive and an attempt to you know understand because when you see the changes that are happening in our city we've all been watching it but when it's happening in your neighborhood it does feel really differently but the the city should and really has to approve this project there's there's not a way not to and it's been referred to a little bit here and one of the things is about the site of this project this is within the city limits this is where growth is supposed to happen you know we have the best land use decision I think we ever made in this community was to keep development within the city limits but there's another reason that I'm struck by why this is such a wonderful site which is that it's available and it is a lot of people have said there must be a better site there must be a better site no there's not it's really really hard to find a site and the site has a lot to say about it my very favorite thing was to turn commuters into neighbors you know as well as just the real thoughtfulness on on addressing how the world is changing the way we use cars is changing the rules around them obviously are changing faster than we can even keep up with but then the final thing is you know this project really is doing its darkest to take a different approach to affordability and I have a lot of respect for that to try to design thoughtfully and efficiently because it is so as as civilly said earlier there's not enough subsidy public subsidy available to meet our affordable housing needs and one of the things that we can do is design our housing differently and this project really does that and really really thoughtfully and let's see I will be enthusiastically supporting this project and in any field I have one more thing I wanted to talk about the parking thing just one last time which is that it sounds like the developers are also really concerned about keeping the parking on their property that's what I'm hearing so would there be I know that the city in in you know what we read is not interested in changing the rules of permit parking as they stand but is there a world in which that can be made an exception so that everybody can have like that permit parking can stay out of the neighborhood since they're committed to keeping parking on their property I think the the easy way to address that question is just that this site this address is not eligible for the residential parking permit program will stop they couldn't they couldn't apply today they couldn't apply tomorrow it's not a concern and it's a great shared parking situation this is the new reality like some people are there shopping the morning some are going to church some are going to school you know it's a huge parking lot designed to 1958 let's drive our big-ass cars down the freeway standards Eric and Tiffany can I ask you one question this is not necessarily about this project but are bike shares computer considered vehicle shares? uh not that I'm aware of I don't know that there's a these are these are the idea that you've got a high quality transit line and or yeah and or a a car share within a certain distance car up yeah I know there's there are um exceptions for those projects that do require parking where you can substitute bike parking for automobile parking but it really doesn't um I was I was thinking you know in terms of sort of uh other development scenarios where uh parking is reduced by proximity of shared vehicles so but but the bike the city bikes do not count in that regard okay I could I'd be happy to address like car share um we will be launching a um essentially a permit program for car share vendors to come into the city and apply for spaces in the public right-of-way to to provide a car share spot um that's in the public right-of-way but um private developers could also apply for car share companies to have a car share on their private property as well and have their own agreements there there's a couple zip cards like easy walk up into UCSA already too I'm here yeah I make a brief comment on behalf of the property owner sure um as I said I'm a member of peace united church of christ and Sibley simon is our esteemed developer he's a professional affordable housing developer I'm not a professional developer you could say I'm an accidental developer however my profession my profession has to do with real property litigation and I've spent decades involved with real property development and I want to make the point for everyone in this room that the reason why we've been able to achieve the level of affordability that we have in this project is that our church is contributing the land where the project is built and the parking that's required for the project residents we're not going to be paid a nickel up front for that contribution in addition I and others haven't been paid a dime for six or seven years of professional support work so we truly have um a faith-based community-oriented project that is sincerely intended to meet the community needs we our church has been a center of our community since long before any of our other neighbors arrived we are the community we're at the center of the community we are neighbors and we care about the well-being of our neighbors another point that has been made is that we proactively engaged in conversations with our only immediate residential neighbors the occupants of the Hager court townhouses at UCSC and we designed our project according to their concerns it's specifically designed to meet their concerns for maintaining the open space between our project and them for maintaining their vistas of the bay over our buildings for improving their vistas by removing big eucalyptus trees for reducing fire hazard about which they're very concerned with regard to those seeing eucalyptus trees and we will also be preserving their pedestrian walkway through our property to and from high street and improving it it's now a goat trail it will become an improved developed lighted walkway so it's going to be a great benefit to the entire neighborhood okay that's all I have to say thank you well I that's a really good segue to one of my comments I wasn't expecting to think about religion so much tonight I was raised Methodist and I am not part of the Methodist church anymore but I just missed that community and love it and seeing you all out here makes me appreciate how much these communities do when I thought about this site and I grew up in this neighborhood running around with my friends up the hill and there is wealth and privilege in every direction from the site and I just that's okay that's where we live that's this part of town I include myself in that statement I live on the west side but it's so great to see a project actively fighting that I mean as stated by the the project team this is what decent communities do this project supports our mission of social justice like right on right on so I'm happy to feel positive about religion today in my heart so thank you like Julie I was kind of sad this one was going to sail through without any speechifying from us but gosh darn it this is the template for an administrative approval project there's no parking impact these are not busy streets they're not blocking anybody's view they're not taking advantage of the many different strategies some developers could do to get bigger wider harder you know all these different things so just acknowledging that like compared to most of our projects I understand that's all driven by financial pressure but it's really refreshing to see people not grabbing everything they possibly can in this setting so I acknowledge and really appreciate that I just have two more things to say me and I love seeing Andrew out and his dad out here me and him are second generation Santa Cruz and you know how many of us are around here zero me and Andrew and Mike and you know maybe a couple others that I don't know but that's our problem is we can't keep good people in this town it's impossible to raise your kids here this project will help hopefully my kids get their kids you know to stay here in Santa Cruz so that's just wonderful and particularly seeing him up here was was just great so yeah the last thing I'd like to say is the neighbors please stop appealing please stop suing this project should be in the ground we need housing I hear you I know you have concerns there's this is the kind of project where if you walk over and talk to them tomorrow they'll probably take your concerns seriously and hear them so just stop you're just delaying things I'm sorry to say that I have known Deb Elston for years I mean I see a lot of other names of people I know who live in that neighborhood but we cannot continue to kill apartments like this it's ridiculous I don't know where the nearest apartment to this site is I didn't think of that earlier but it's like condos and single family anyway it's a long long walk so good to see some apartments being built so finishing like with my pride with all of you commissioners that I disagree with sometimes and agree with sometimes in the community like this is Santa Cruz we are pro housing you know when my dad sat up here on city council and his memorial service was at your church thank you it was wonderful we had a lot of parking in the neighborhoods but if he was here I don't know that he would could conceive of this sort of a pro housing coalition in this town so truly disagree agree rock and let's do it let's improve this project to move on okay thank you um yeah I just wanted to make a couple quick comments too first thank you to the development team and peace united church this is a great project with probably the most diverse or I'm sorry diverse set of units for all the different circumstances in life that people may find themselves in and as my colleague said it is an exemplary administrative approval it's an awesome project and you know we may feel differently about form and the look of it all but at the end of the day the function and what it will do as a service to this community is awesome so thank you guys so much for putting so much time and effort into this thank you for the staff report as well whoever wrote it I love your writing I'm a teacher and I see a lot of writing come across my desk I like your writing styles just want to put that out there thank you secondly yes to our neighbors and just kind of along the lines of what our colleagues have said about the state essentially preempting a lot of the development decisions that come across our desk that is going to be the way things are going to go for the immediate foreseeable and if you want an example of why this project took seven years just to get here and it hasn't even broken ground that's a problem correct so basically the era of democratic control over planning processes has ended because of that problem and because of the appeal that we are looking at right here tonight okay so that's another thing I just wanted to say really quick another last thing I wanted to say is that projects like this infill development in high income areas next to job centers along transit corridors is exactly the type of building that we want and exactly the type of building that we need occasionally I've had the pleasure of finding myself in Alaska and great fishing wonderful music good people but that's not the best part of it the best part of it is Whittier Alaska and for those of you who have not been there have not heard of it the entire town lives in one 15 story building and the reason for that is because they don't want to sprawl into the natural environment and create more environmental problems than there already exist in a place that is pretty heavily mined and pretty heavily fished right so this project is somewhere in between Whittier Alaska and what my colleague affectionately called the hellscape of automobile capitalism so I think projects like this are exactly the type of thing we need and exactly the place we need it and again no project is perfect but I love this project so thank you so much there are other comments we're going to develop roll call please come Mr. Conway hi Dawson hi Gordon hi McKelvie hi Paul Hamas hi Kennedy hi thanks all right thanks everybody thanks for coming out we just have a few more boring things on our agenda so if you can John Wesley would be proud of you thank you we got one more item to do can you guys all just clear out please yeah we got to keep going thank you should we call the police all right Eric uh just informational items schedule look ahead and everybody here sure please allow your voices yeah so a couple uh a couple quick updates last June I mentioned to you and one of these reports that the ground hill water treatment plants um going through a significant upgrade to that facility and then an EIR was going to be coming out and and that will happen the draft will be released on December 7th we'll have a 60 day public review period ending on February 5th that'll be available on the water department web page it'll be hard copies in the water department and at the main library you'll have a minor role in making a recommendation to counsel on on some of the habitable persons of the the project the administrative building it's it's a use permit but counsel is going to have the final say on that entitlement um so that'll probably happen in the spring um 1800s O'Kell was heard by counsel on Tuesday and it was approved they they did add a couple of conditions that were um related to uh some traffic circulation improvements that were agreed to by the applicants such as extending the left turn lane on Hagamon and widening the uh access to the alley a little bit and things like that um so that was all the sidewalks got narrower sidewalks to get narrower by extra two trees or did they make it through um I think I had a two-street you know I have I have to confess I I did not attend the meeting and I showed up at the very end so I didn't see the when I hear like sidewalks getting narrower you know they did for turns bad for everybody else using that street and there there were some enhanced bike lanes on Soquel too that's good so uh and then uh schedule uh December 21st we have the CrossFit in Harvey West Park and then the downtown hotel uh no meeting on January 4th because it's during the holiday closure uh we do have one item for January 18th which is the local hazard mitigation plan update from Tiffany Wise West that's on the horizon I feel like that hotel's a big one and it's gonna be a busy week is there any way to like send us some early I know I know yeah I know I can't be there so I don't know if others are yeah we'll we'll do what we can but it's it's gonna be a big report so I'm okay I'm expecting probably be right at the deadline but we'll do our best if we can get it out earlier we will I'm going to ask for it that's all I have okay thanks everybody with that I will adjourn this meeting thank you all thank you very good