 Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for today's planning commission meeting. Today's date is September 28, 2022. And today's meeting is completely remote via zoom. There are a couple of different ways to participate in today's meeting. If your computer is equipped with a microphone, it is recommended that you participate via the planning commission zoom meeting link. Which is posted on the planning department's homepage at sccoplanning.com. Alternatively, if your computer is not equipped with a microphone, you may provide comment by telephone. The call in number is 669-900-6833. And when prompted, the collaboration code is 814-8152-8029. During key points in today's meeting, time will be provided for members of the public to provide their testimony. Speakers will be muted until called on to speak. I will ask participants who wish to provide testimony to either remotely raise your hand by selecting the hand icon on the zoom link. Or if you're calling in by telephone by remotely raising your hand by pressing star nine on your phone. I will call on participants by either your name or the last four digits of your telephone number. If you're participating via the zoom link when I call on you to speak, you'll see a pop up on your screen that says unmute. Please accept the pop up. Say your name for the record and provide your testimony. It's calling in via telephone. You must unmute yourself by pressing star six. And I will remind everybody of these commands later on in the meeting as well. And if at any time you have difficulty today connecting to the meeting, we do have some tech support with us today who is checking his email period periodically throughout the meeting. His name is Michael lamb. You can email him at Michael dot lamb. That's L a m. As Santa Cruz County dot us. He will indicate to me that we need to pause the meeting and make sure we have somebody connected who's having difficulty connect, connecting. If, if that happens, so please reach out to him. And with that, I will turn over the meeting to the chair. Good morning chair Gordon. Good morning, Miss Drake, how are you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for the intro. Before we call this order, I just want to make sure that everyone can hear us. We had a little technical issues morning. Commissioner shepherd. Can you hear us okay now. I just got off the phone with commissioner shepherd and she is switching to her laptop. So, give her a few minutes. She is here. She's trying to get connected. And it sounds like she is connecting now. We can hang tight for just a minute here then until she's ready. Okay, I'm here. All right. Good morning. Good morning. Great. Okay. All right. Well, then, like the, as Ms Drake said, welcome everyone to the planning commission hearing for today on September 28 2022. The time is now 934 and we can call the meeting to order miss. Please have a roll call. Yes. Commissioner Dan. Here. Commissioner shepherd. Here. Mr. Lazenby. Here. Mr. Villalante. Here. And chair Gordon. Here. All right. Thank you. All right, we're all here. Move on to agenda item number two additions and corrections to the agenda. Ms. Drake, do we have any additions or corrections today? No, not today. We did initially send out an agenda that had a meeting start of start time of 9am. So I just wanted to apologize to any members of the public who saw that agenda and may have tried to connect early. We did corrected on our website. And when we noticed the error, however, I just wanted to put that out there that the agenda was corrected to reflect the 930 meeting time. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Okay, we can move to agenda item number three declaration of ex parte communications. Do any commissioners have anything to declare today? I would just like to state that I'm familiar with the parcel that we're hearing and item seven today. It is located in the second district. And so I obviously driven by the property in my time in the second district. Great. Thank you. Okay, with that, we can move on to agenda item number four oral communications. This is the time when members of the public have the opportunity to speak on things that are not on today's agenda. Ms. Drake, do we have anyone that like to speak at this time? All right. So please raise your hand if you would like to speak I see one hand raised members of the public who are speaking right now please be aware we'll give you two minutes to provide comment and this is to provide comment on any topic that is not on today's agenda just as a reminder. And I am seeing the hand raised by a gentleman or or gentle lady by the name of Andy. Good morning. Please state your name for the record your full name. You have two minutes. It's Andy Lozano. And my only comment is that this last spring they had the heliport operating all for a long time and it was very noisy and there was many days that they were doing it. And I guess it was probably PG need doing power lines and stuff equipment but it just be nice that they would notify people case something was happening, you know, at their property so that they could coordinate. Not have it get disturbed by this loud noise that was taking place. I mean, even after hours after the quarry would shut down they were running on weekends and after time and that's my only. Yes, I'm sorry but it sounds like you're making a comment on an item that is on the agenda item number seven all the springs worry is that correct. I didn't look at the agenda I'm sorry. Okay. If you wouldn't mind holding that comment for just a few minutes. We will reopen the public hearing when we get to the item and you that would be the appropriate time to make a comment on that project. Okay, thank you. Sorry about that chair I just jumped in there. Appreciate it. Are there any other members of the public with us today who wish to speak on an item that is not on today's agenda. If so please raise your hand by pressing star nine on your telephone, or using the hand icon on the zoom app chair I am seeing no further hands raised. Okay, thank you so much. Then we can go ahead and close the oral communications agenda item number four at this time, and move on to our scheduled items, starting with item six approval of the minutes. Any commissioners have any discussion questions or motion on this item. Yes, chair I actually would like to move that we continue this item to next meeting I don't believe them and it's we're actually distributed to the planning commission. I don't, I know I didn't review them perhaps I missed them but I believe we need my I would make a motion that we continue this item to the following meeting. I'll second that. I have a motion and a second to continue this item, and we would any other commissioners like to discuss that. Nice. Did I get them in separately on a little vague. Yeah, that's kind of the challenge that we're hearing that we, we didn't get them emailed they are online. However, we didn't have a chance to review. If I could interrupt here, we did get them for last week's hearing. That's why we don't have them in this packet. Well, I'd be glad to get them again and continue it. Right. I agree. Agreed. Okay, sounds like we're on the same page. Let's go ahead and take a vote on that item. Yes. Commissioner Lason B. Yes. Commissioner Shepard. Yes. Commissioner Dan. Yes. Mr. Villante. Yes. And chair Gordon. Yes. Okay. We'll send those out to you before the next meeting. Thank you. Quick request on that. I know online on the previous one there was the links to the motions that were made. And can we add that in? When those get sent out so that we can see the motions as well as not, not just the vote possible. The, like we, last time for the last meeting on the 14th, I believe we posted a document that showed all of the proposed amendments. Is that what you're referring to? Yes. Okay. Yep. We will do that as well. Okay. With that, we can move on to agenda item number seven. This is project number zero or excuse me, eight, eight dash zero, two, three, three. It is the review of the all of, all of spring's quarry. Located at 1299 all the spring's road. Ms. Drake, do we have a staff report available for this today? Yes, we're joined by, with, by David Carlson this morning with our policy and sustainability section. And I believe he'll be presenting this morning on this item. Good morning, David. Good morning. Thank you. I do have a presentation, which I will share now. And is that. Is that sharing? Can you see the title slide? Yes. Okay. Okay. So this is a compliance review of the all of spring's quarry. It's a little background, first of all, on, on the mining program in the county. We are the county is a lead agency for implementation of the state's surface mining and reclamation act or Smara. California is the only state that has such a program and everywhere else mining is regulated at the state level. The county has a local mining ordinance. We issue permits and we conduct inspections and report to the state. The county mining regulations require a public hearing and review of existing permitted mining operations for compliance with conditions of approval at regular intervals. This is an aspect of our local mining regulations that actually goes beyond the requirements of Smara. In addition, with the permit review, the code provides for in position of new conditions by your commission under certain circumstances. However, the staff report for this item concludes that the all of spring's quarry is in compliance with the conditions of approval of their permit. And we're not recommending any new conditions. See, are you seeing the second slide now. Not yet. Okay. That's not working. Oh, here we go. Beautiful. Are you seeing the vicinity map slide now. Yes. Okay, good. Let's just make sure this is working so. No, that's not going back to that slide. Are you seeing it in full screen. No, we see your PowerPoint. Yeah, let's see, I'm going to stop share and do this again just to make sure something different is happening. Let's see what we can just do on these presentations. Let's see here. I'm going to stop that. If you have any trouble also, David, you can try just emailing the PowerPoint to Michael and having him share his screen while you. Let's see here if you resumed slideshow. Okay, I'm going to close out, and I'm going to open it again. So I've stopped screen sharing over there. And make it big and share that. Okay. Now are you seeing the vicinity map. Yes, in full screen. Okay. Sorry about that. That's okay. No problem. Okay. Okay, so the quarry is located in the hills above. So Cal on all of spring's road in a rural residential area near Nicene Mark State parks and the so Cal demonstration forest. There's a little bit of background and outline of the presentation. So that the history of the quarry goes back to 1932 when the county began mining the granitic rock underlying sugar loaf mountain for county projects. Over time, the ownership has changed into private ownership and mining has continued under various county use permits. The mine currently operates pursuant to a mining permit approved by your commission in 1994 for a 50 year term. The planning commission conducted similar reviews of the mining operation in 2001 2006 and 2011. During the 2006 review, a minor amendment was approved involving the drainage plan, revegetation plan and various minor changes to conditions of approval. And during the 2006 review, there was considerable discussion involving neighbors, the quarry operator at the time planning department staff and your commission regarding the issues of quarry traffic on all of spring's road. And as a result, the quarry entrance driveway was relocated trucker education was stepped up speed monitoring was stepped up and enforcement and complaint documentation was improved. Based on the lack of complaints it appears these measures have been effective in mitigating the impact of quarry traffic on the neighborhood. During the 2011 review, another minor amendment to the mining plans was approved to respond to a landslide on the quarry face. That minor amendment approval involved adding a series of technical technical reports and revised mining plans to the list of exhibits and in the conditions of approval. It changed the mining area, but it changed the mining procedures to work around and ultimately mine out the landslide area. And the rest of the slideshow will be a series of images and some explanations of the various parts of the mining operation, and then some additional information on trucking. And we'll start at the quarry entrance down here with the office and some storage stockpiles are in the next image. And then after view of this area includes the the entrance to the quarry right here off all of spring's road. Some some material stockpiles, the office and scale located here and then the exit back onto all of spring's road. And you can see also on the slide vegetated buffer between this area of the mine and adjacent neighbors. There's just another view of the office and the scale area. And then here's the couple of views of the mine itself. And the image on the right is just a straight overhead view and the image on the left is a oblique view of the excavation into sugarloaf mountain, which you can see it's starts from the top and continues by pushing material down towards the quarry floor. And you can note in this these images, the lighter gray rock is the is the harder granitic rock and the lighter brown material is decomposed granite overburden on top of that. So there's a couple of different materials that are part of the excavation. There's the upper processing plant here on the quarry floor. There's another smaller processing plant down here. And then continuing down is the asphalt plant is located in this location. And then some additional additional processing plant down here and material stockpiles. And this this is the road that comes up from the office to this area of the mining operation. And you can see some roads that are taken to get up to the top. All of the drainage on from the quarry face and the quarry floor is routed into a series of ponds located at the lower part of the of the mine along Soquel Creek which runs approximately through through the along the levees of for these ponds in this location. This is pond A. And this is pond B these are stormwater ponds that collect this stormwater runoff from the from the mining area. And then over here is pond C and that is the pond that is used to recirculate process water into the wet plant that processes material. This run stormwater runoff that is collected in ponds A and B are used to supplement the water in pond C throughout the year and then there's also a an additional well on site that is used to supplement the water supply in the later parts of the summer when the ponds dry up. I mentioned earlier there's some there's a levees right here that separates pond A from Soquel Creek and there's some reinforcement of that levee that was installed a long time ago and you can see that it's well vegetated and stable and hasn't been any problems with that over the years. That levee continues along pond B separating it from Soquel Creek and then there's a separate levee that separates pond C from from Soquel Creek. So I'll go on to the next slide and we'll see some images of some of these things I just talked about here's the actual final mining plans that show the final benches and slopes. At the final excavation stage you can see the dashed line is that area of granitic rock with the overburden above it. And then this dashed line is the leasehold area within the larger part the leasehold area for the mine within the larger parcels. This is just a partial view of the of the property lines here that go in this direction and this direction and then this dashed line is just the outline of the leasehold for the mining itself within that larger parcel. And there's a couple of cross sections on this slide that I'll show in the next slide and so the darker line is the final slopes and benches. You can see in the in the lower area where it's granitic rock and it's more it's harder more stable rock. It's a steeper final configuration and then that overburden area on top is less steep final configuration for final slope stability and then the last line is what the existing ground surface configuration was back in 2011 when this was produced. So these dash this has been mined out a little bit more so these dashed lines are actually closer to final configuration at this point. Here's a view from the top, looking down at that same area, the processing plant and stockpile area. You can see just little portions of the the benching on the slope. And the ponds over here, and then pond C is over here and you can see the material that is periodically dredged out of pond C to keep its capacity is stored here and dried out and then ultimately shipped off site. And then here's a picture from the bottom looking up. You can see what that as material is pushed down from the bottom it ends up in these large piles at the bottom and then it's scooped up from here and brought over to the processing plants to make the final products. Here's that image of that one processing plant. On the quarry floor, it's the dry processing plant. They don't use water in this in this processing plant. The water is used in the smaller plant that's down below. Here's an image of the asphalt plant. This is a relatively small asphalt planet that all Springs quarry doesn't service the large jobs that, for example, the granite construction felting quarry asphalt plant services the highway paving jobs and the night operations they this the this asphalt plan just serves the smaller projects there's no night operations. Just during working hours. Here's an image of pond a you can see in the background the levy that separating it from so Cal Creek. Good wildlife habitat around it there here's a wood dock box that's been that are positioned around the pond there's some western pond turtles in this pond it's really good habitat for them. And at this point it's pretty full this this obviously dries out later in the year this image was taken probably at the end of the during the winter at the end of the or in the spring. And then looking the other direction at pond be the lower water level and overflow pipe. So when pond a overflows, it goes through this pipe and and fills up on be. And then you can see the levy between pond be and so Cal Creek here, well vegetated stable. There's an overflow pipe from pond be into so Cal Creek so when this fills up and overflows. Overflow pipe and a stable rock lines energy dissipated, but it rarely does overflow. And so there's adequate capacity on the site and ponds to pretty much contain all the water, even even in a large winner on in the ponds on the site and. So that it's it's very few and far between when you actually have a discharge from pond be into so Cal Creek, I can't remember last time it actually occurred same with pond see. Which is in this image so you can see the infrastructure that recirculates the water between the processing plant and this pond. It's well vegetated it's periodically excavated in one previous image you saw the stockpiles that are next to the pond in this area. So, because this is a recirculating pond. It receives a lot of sediment you know silt and clay laden water and so periodically has to be excavated. So that it can continue to be used. Continue to be used in the processing plant. And that's pretty much the tour of the mining facilities but and now we're back down here at the office and scale looking right at the scale and then you know I wanted to point out the signage here on the office for truckers that reminds them about observing the speed limit. Observing the neighbors sharing the road and that speed is enforced by radar. So, when the trucks leave the quarry they travel down. All the springs road it's about a mile and a half along all the springs road until they get to so Cal San Jose road, and that goes through the rural residential neighborhood. You can see one of the road signs here a share the road sign. And then on the next slide is just some examples of some of the signage along that road. There's a numerous speed limit signs indicating the 25 mile an hour speed limit on in the inbound direction and the outbound direction. There's share the road signs, the horse and rider sign, and then there's one section of road that is one lane it's kind of constrained by a large tree that's right next to the road and so there's signs before and after that inbound and outbound that there is a one lane road section. On the next slide I wanted to show a little bit of the traffic, the radar monitoring data. So this is done every month and this is just a sample of one month of the year in July. The radar monitoring is done on random days twice a week. In July here actually there was nine days that radar monitoring was done for one hour each day in the morning. And here is data so in the blue are the quarry trucks and then the yellow is the other vehicles that were monitored and I've indicated on or you can see on here that for the most part. Nearly all the time the quarry trucks are observing the 25 mile an hour speed limit or in a lot of cases, significantly slower than that. And then there are cases where trucks have been observed going faster than 25 miles an hour and they have been warned in the monitoring data there's indications that those truckers were were warned and looking at the data myself I can see that those truckers are repeat offenders. They're warned and it generally doesn't occur again. You don't notice that particular truck or company noted again as speeding. So these are like new drivers or something that that need to be reminded I guess. But but rarely. And then on the other hand you can see that other passenger vehicles generally do and don't observe the speed limit. They're exceeding the speed limit much more often than the trucks are. And so with that I wanted to finally provide my staff recommendation that which is to conduct public hearing and perform a review of the all springs quarry for compliance with conditions of approval and find that the quarry is in compliance with their approval 88 dash 0233 as amended. And then I just wanted to mention that there was one piece of correspondence that I think was provided to your commission from a neighbor who appreciates the quarry has lived there for a long time. And also as a member of the mountain elementary school board wanted to mention that the quarry has been very generous with with the school. And coincidentally also I wanted to say that Christine bone the the operator of the quarry as a graduate of mountain elementary school. She's retiring this year at the end of the year. And I just want to say it's been a pleasure working with her and the quarries been pretty in my experience conscientious and complying with their conditions of approval and conscientious about the operations in the context of their neighborhood I think and going to miss working with Christine and looking forward to working with the new operators which are going to be the underlying landowners and there's a few things that we need to do to accomplish that transition regarding transfer the financial assurance and some other details and we're currently working on that and what and we'll complete that transition before the end of the year. And with that that concludes my staff recommendation I'm available for any questions. Chair Gordon. Yes, I wish it's like to make a comment. The other. I've been on the Pontic Mission a long time and so as commissioner Dan for a while anyway. And I just want to say this is an example of when the Pontic Mission is a very useful and positive hearing level because all those changes and recommendations and modifications. Those were held at lengthy meetings with a great deal of public input. And I'm glad to see that things seem to be working fine. But I also want to say that we have a very fine county planner that was an excellent staff report, giving us a great that overview of how the way work sounds simple but it's really hard to put together and make it make sense and he always does a great job so thank you for the staff report. And I want to say if things are relatively calm there. It's because of my commissions done a lot of work on this particular project. Yeah, great. Thank you. Great addition and thank you Mr Carlson. Great report and absolutely appreciate the work that goes into it, especially to make it easy for us to understand when mining is not our day to day activity so thank you. Did any commissioners have any questions, staff at this time, sounds like none. I don't believe that we have, correct me if I'm wrong, an applicant here, you know the spring, the quarry. Yeah, there should be the operator should be on the line. I think, um, do we just approve and what's that. I want to ask, Jocelyn, what's the, what's the action. Well, we should open the public hearing and hear from the public, and then turn it back over to the planning commission to. What was the red David can remind us to find that the olive Springs quarry is in compliance with conditions of approval. Is the action. Thanks David. Hey David what is the name of the representative of the quarry. I believe it's Chris that I'm looking at the list here and it's Christine so I'm seeing a Chris, I, and there's only one so that must be her. Okay. Okay, so then at this time we can go ahead and open the public comment portion of the hearing and we'll go ahead and start with the applicant if they had anything that they'd like to add or discuss, and then move on from there. Um, so I am seeing some hands raised by members of the public. I'm wanting to see if the applicant is with us this morning and would like to provide comment and I am seeing a hand raised by Chris so we'll see if that is the applicant representative. Good morning Chris will you please state your name for the record. You have 10 minutes. If you're the applicant. Okay, I think, I think you're good to go Chris to unmute yourself. Looks like he's unmuted. Good morning, Chris can you hear us. Sometimes people have a little bit of difficulty and muting on their side. I was looking again that figure I just want to add a little bit of clarity on the process so we'll hear from the applicant and then we can move to the general public comment and then at the end of the general public comment that you know have time to respond to any other comments are brought up by the rest of the public. And then we'll close the public comment and bring it back to the commission for discussion. Okay, thank you chair. Thanks. Chris, maybe having issues with the zoom app. I'm not sure you can always use the call in number. Yeah, you could call in at is that the 669 900 6833. Yes. Okay. Why don't you repeat that slower I know when in in this situation and you kind of like it's very tense or just say it real slow. So the phone number is 669. 900. 6833. And there is a collaboration code that you need to enter when you call. It is 814. 8152. 8029. And can also email Michael lamb at Santa Cruz County. So Michael dot lamb L a m at Santa Cruz County dot us if all else fails. So chair I don't know if you want to hear from the public and maybe circle back with the applicant. Can we do that so we're not just waiting. I think it might be a good idea. Okay. Thank you. So members of the public who have their hands raised will be allowed three minutes for public comment and I'll just work my way down the list. I'm seeing a hand raised by Robert granite. Good morning Robert, will you please restate your name for the record. You have three minutes. My name is Robert granite. I'm a neighbor. My property adjoins the office and and scale. Part of the property and my concern is is the one that was raised previously by Andy left now. There was some helicopter operations twice and I'm not sure in the past year or possibly the past two years. Work was being done for PG and E with helicopters to replace poles. And the second time was in April. They use two helicopters. One was a large military helicopter like my one of my neighbors told me it was a black Hawk. I don't know but it was a very large military type helicopter and the noise and was off the scale. It was I was unable. It was there was no notice to either time. And the second time with the military helicopters they were from I think it was from Thursday to Sunday with no noted notification, no prior notification. I was unable to use my property. I was forced to keep my windows and doors closed for the entire time. And even that they were flying 60 foot male poles over my property. People hanging from it. And I just this is not addressed in the report at all. I don't really care to be living next to an airport. And I was just hoping that this could be addressed for the future that I think that this falls under the category of a nuisance in the in the report there was the noise was I didn't I wasn't able to measure it but the noise was very loud and that's that's my concern. I'm hoping that this could be addressed for the future. And that's all I have to say. Thank you Robert. I had a question. I'm not sure if these were new PG&E poles or were they of the quarries, you know the quarry order them or is PG&E doing stuff there because I've had similar experiences up here in SLV for three or four days but it's PG&E doing it. Yeah, maybe Mr. Shepherd when the applicant has an opportunity to speak again they can discuss that. Yeah. I can address it too. Maybe can we can continue at the public comment please. Okay. Next call on John Owen. Good morning John you have three minutes please restate your name for the record. Good morning John. Good morning. My name is John Owen with me is also my wife Lynn Owen. We are the closest adjacent neighbor to the olive Springs quarry. The top of our property directly abuts the quarry face. And I just wanted to state for the record that the quarry has always been extremely good neighbors to us. Throughout the construction of our house and throughout the years we've been here about 25 years. And it's, I'm not sure how to expand upon that but it has always been, the quarry has been excellent neighbors and always been helpful and respectful of the neighborhood as far as I can see. To address the question about the PG&E I was also aware of that and yes it was loud but it wasn't overly loud and that was completely a PG&E operation that I don't believe that had anything to do directly with the quarry other than that was their landing zone. So that's all I need to say thank you. Thank you John. All right, I am seeing Chris's hand raised let's see if we can check in with Chris. Because if you're the applicant you have 10 minutes. Good morning and please state your full name for the record. I need to unmute. I'm trying. Sure. Melissa are you able to unmute Chris? It's not seeming to work for me. It's not working for me either. Chris if you have a pop up that says unmute please accept the pop up with Chris's mute. Let me try promoting Chris to panelist. Chris if you see an invitation to accept a promotion to panelist please accept that. If you can hear me. I'm in here. Okay. Chris unmute yourself you're a panelist you can speak. Good morning Chris. You are unmuted. Chris can you hear us. I don't know what is happening with Chris Chris is unmuted as a panelist. I'll go back to the list of speakers and we'll go we'll check back in with Chris in a moment. So I will call on Thomas stuff. Suften. Good morning Thomas you have three minutes please state your name for the record. Good morning Thomas. You're unmuted. Thomas. Hello. You want to read out the phone number one more time just one. Yes. Well we. I will I don't know I'm seeing these folks are unmuted I'm not sure why what what is happening on their end. I will read out the number again for folks that are having trouble connecting. Not sure if they're on the phone or on the app Thomas. The phone number again is 669. 6833. And the confirmation code or collaboration code is 814. 8152. 8029. And when you call in you'll press star nine on your phone to remotely raise your hand. I will move on and we'll see we'll check back in with Thomas and Chris in a moment. Okay, so my name is Jeremiah. Good morning. Please say your name for the record. My name is Jeremiah hard. I work at the Corrie and I'm here with Chris. Okay. I can hand the phone over to her time using my phone for the zoom her microphone on her computer's not working. Perfect. Great and you have 10 minutes. That would be great if we could hear from Chris. Thank you so much, Jeremiah. Good morning. Good morning. I'm Christine Bone. Good morning, please say your name for the record. Good morning, I'm Christine Bone. Oh, good morning. Hi, Christine. Good morning. Nice to finally talk to you. Yes, did you have any comments on the project to add to David's wonderful presentation this morning? Yeah, first I would like to say thank you to David. He's always been professional and great to work with, easy to work with, and ready to help us. Oh, sorry about that. I accidentally muted you, Jeremiah. I'm sorry. Please unmute yourself again, Jeremiah. I'm sorry. Sorry about that, Chris. That's okay. I'm not sure what you missed, but we have always really appreciated all the help from David Carlson. I need to comment on the helicopter question. The PG&E came with me, to me, desperate for a place to use, to stage their equipment needed to change out some poles. We've all heard on the news about problems with PG&E and problems with fires and whatnot. So in my mind, since they had, they told me they had nowhere else to stage for this project that we would let them do it here. And the first time they were here for, I can't remember for sure, one day or two. And there were no complaints from any neighbors. And then a few months later, they came back and said they needed to complete some work and could they use the same area? So I said yes. And then it turned out that they brought in a big helicopter and to my recollection, it was only on the weekend. They did not use their big heavy equipment during the weekday if they use it at all. I can't recall for sure. But on Saturday morning, I got up early to the sound of a loud helicopters and went, oh no, this possibly could not turn out well for the neighbors at the quarry. But at that point, there was really nothing I could do. So Monday morning when I got to work, they had already cleared out, but I notified PG&E at that time that they would not be allowed to use that area any longer. And since then, I have heard them in our neighborhood. So I'm not sure where they're staging, but they are not using the quarry any longer. I did have a couple of calls from neighbors, of course, regarding the situation. I think one letter which I responded to and apologize for the inconvenience and let them know that it wouldn't happen again. Thanks, Chris. Did you have any additional comments or would you like to just stay on the line and we can come back to you if there are any additional questions? Yeah, I'll stay on the line. Great, thank you. Okay, so I'll move on to our list of callers and hands raised. I see a caller with the last four digits, 1559. Good morning. Please state your name for the record. You have three minutes. Hi, good morning. This is Thomas Hepburn. Can you hear me? Yes, good morning, Thomas. I'm glad you were able to connect. Thank you. I did try to unmute my computer when the pop-up came, but that didn't work. Anyway, I am calling to offer my support for the quarry and their renewal of their permit for continued operation. I too am a neighbor and occasional user of the quarry and I think they've been exemplary and their operations and community service, they often go out of their way to help neighborhood projects or help with the roads and try very hard to keep their truck traffic under control. And they've been doing that for years. And of course, as is often the case and as the data suggests, it's often the longtime residents with the ones who are going over 25 on that road. But again, they not only do great operation there, do great operation there, but I wanted to make sure to mention that they also are a tremendous community resource providing this resource to the county. So that's just a wonderful thing that's much appreciated. That's the end of my comments. Thank you. Thank you, Thomas. All right. Are there any additional members of the public who wish to speak on this item? All of spring's quarry report back. I see a hand raised by Brent. Good morning, Brent. Will you please state your name for the record? You have three minutes. My name is Brent Eichler. Good morning. Good morning. I would also like to offer my support. I've been a 11 and a half year resident. My property, my family's property is adjacent to the quarryway station off Maka Trail. And they've been great neighbors. We appreciate the service they provide. And Chris, we all hope you have a great retirement and we learn more about the new owner operators in the future. There was one small agenda item that was there. I think it's regarding the road conditions, the pavement conditions along all the springs and adjacent to the exit of the way station. And I don't know that it's truck associated, but there's a lot of redwood trees right there. And they've broken the road apart pretty bad. And it does act as certainly a slowdown for residents as well as trucks. However, that damage to the road needs to be addressed by the public works. At least look at that because it's, it really rattles people's cage when they go by there. So I think that some of the road conditions could be repaired, again, not pursuant necessarily to activity by trucks, but maybe by nature, by route systems. So that would be my only comment, but again, I think they've been fantastic neighbors and I wish Chris the best from our family. Thank you. Thanks Brent. Okay, going back to the list of participants, last call for public comments on this item, the all of spring's quarry report back to the PC. If you wish to make a comment, please raise your hand by pressing star nine on your phone or raising the hand icon on your Zoom app. Not seeing any further hands raised chairs. I'll turn it back over to you. Great, thank you so much. And I appreciate everyone's feedback and comments. This time we can go ahead and close the public comment and bring the discussion back to commission. Mr. Carlson, I wanted to start with, did you add anything to add on the PG&E step? I didn't seem like that got resolved, but I know you had some opinion there in the middle of the conversation. Yeah, that was, it was just, it was something that happened. I was not aware of it and it sounds like it's not gonna happen again. So I think it's resolved. Understood, thank you so much. Okay, any other commissioners, questions, comments, anything like to discuss? If no one else has any comments, I'll be glad to make a motion. Please. Hearing none, I'd like to, let's see, how did you just said what to say, but I forgot already, approve the report, approve the... Move the staff recommendation. Yes, thank you. I move that we approve the staff recommendation. Is there more? Second thought. Okay. Great. And I'd also like to once again, say that this is a very well read query and I'm, Chris, thank you for all your years of making it so. And David, thanks for once again, a very full and comprehensive report that makes it easy. Well, great. Thank you. Okay, we have a motion and a second to move the staff recommendation and unless there's any further discussion, Ms. Drake, can we move on with the roll call vote? Commissioner Lazenby. Yes. Commissioner Shepard. Yes. Commissioner Villalante. Yes. Commissioner Dan. Yes. And Chair Gordon. Yes. Okay. Motion passes. Thank you, David. Thank you. Okay. With that, we can close out agenda item seven and move on to item eight. Oh, excuse me. I'm off on my numbers plus six and move to seven. This project is application number 2001-003, a proposed 19-minute hotel located at 270 North Avenue in Apatowas. Ms. Drake, we have staff ready with the presentation. Yes. We are joined today by Randall Adams with the development review section of the planning department and he'll be moving through his presentation. Good morning. As noted, this is a proposal to construct a 19-room hotel, three stories in height with a rooftop deck on a vacant parcel located in the VA Visitor Accommodation Zone District. If we go to the first slide, next slide. The project site is located at the intersection of Broadway and North Avenue in the C Cliff Village area of Apatowas. As you can see here, it's adjacent to the RTC Railroad Corridor behind it. And it's a little bit to the north and east of kind of the central part or kind of more clustered part of the C Cliff Village, which is at Santa Cruz Avenue, Broadway, Center, Street and State Park. We go to the next slide, please. The subject property is located in the VA Visitor Accommodation Zone District. As I noted, you can see here this on the plan. The majority of the rest of C Cliff Village is on C1, although the RV park to the west is also zone VA Visitor Accommodations. We go to the next slide. So this corresponds with the general plan land use designation of C-V, which is also visitor accommodations. And you can see across the railroad tracks that special use designated parcel in the zoning is also visitor accommodations. That's the poor Claire's site. So this is kind of a cluster of visitor accommodation sites. Visitor accommodation sites are generally priority uses in the coastal zone. And this is located in the coastal zone. I would also like to mention that on this property, back in 2009, there was a prior proposal for a three-story, 12-room hotel that also included a restaurant and a gymnasium with a spa, which was approved in 2009 by the Board of Supervisors. Your commission also did review that before it went to the board. The reason it went to the board was because there was an amendment to the C Cliff Village Plan to allow a three-story building on the site. Previously, the Village Plan had limited to two stories and to allow the other ancillary uses with the hotel. Although the current proposal does not include such uses, it is just a 19-room hotel that is also three stories in height. Go to the next slide, please. This is on site 4B in the C Cliff Village Plan, as I just mentioned. And so it's part of a cluster of other sites. You can see the hash diagrams. Those are the areas that are under the regulation of the C Cliff Village Plan, which provides additional design and land use guidance beyond the zoning code and the general plan. Go to the next slide. Here are some pictures of the vicinity. This first upper picture shows the main commercial corridor of C Cliff Village, although there also is a corridor along State Park as well. Below this, you'll see a slide of Broadway. There's a little bit of shadowing there, but what I'm trying to do is to show the condition of the roadway along Broadway. If we go to the next slide, which you'll see more here. You can see the pavement is in very poor condition on Broadway. And the slide below also shows the project site there. That's the site with somewhat battered chain link and fencing with the signs on it. Go to the next slide, please. And here's a close-up of that. So you can see the subject property. It is vacant. It has gravel on the site. It had been used by a contractor as a staging area, which actually created a lot of concerns for the neighborhood. We can talk about that a bit more later and we may hear more about that. A lot of the correspondence in your packet actually relates to that period of time, which was before the applicant held an additional neighborhood meeting in December of 2021. And since that time, we've been working to resolve some of the issues that neighbors had raised. You see at the back of the property there, you see some trees at the rear of the property. Some of those are on the RTC railroad right-of-way and some of them are on the subject property and some of the ones on the railroad right-of-way have limbs and so forth that cross over. We'll talk more about tree removals, but those trees would need to be trimmed back and there would be some tree removals proposed in that area to accommodate the hotel. Next slide, please. These are views from the site looking back towards the C-Cliff Village area and to the west and south of the subject property are two RV parks. Won't wanna talk about those too much, but they do appear to be being used currently as permanent housing, kind of an affordable housing option for some people. But that was not the original intended use, but that's not the subject of this project. Next slide, please. This is a shot looking towards the adjacent residential neighborhood along North Avenue, which extends out to the east from the subject property. Neighbors along North Avenue have concerns about the hotel and they will probably be able to speak about that and we will provide some ideas and suggestions on how to solve some of their concerns. Next slide, please. So this is the site plan, as you can see the site plan, really the site is mostly covered by building and parking. There is not a lot of area left when you go to a hotel that has 19 rooms on a property of this size, which is approximately 14,000 square feet. But in this case, there are 19 guest rooms proposed with an additional manager's unit on the ground floor. One parking space is required per visitor accommodation unit, in other words, per guest room. There is no specific parking requirement for a manager's unit. However, the applicant has proposed 19 parking spaces plus an additional space for the manager's unit that would, as you can see at the lower part of the drawing, their space 20 would be located off of a driveway off of North Avenue. So that does provide a spot for the manager and also for one spot for each guest room, which is in compliance with county code. Next slide, please. So these are just some graphics of the floor plans. It's a typical hotel design with a breakfast area on the second floor. Third floor has some additional balconies and decking. Go to the next slide. The applicant is also requesting to install a rooftop deck on top of the hotel. Unlike in residential development where we prohibit rooftop decks on top of a second floor, this is something that the applicant is able to ask for. It's something they've included in their proposal for your consideration. And this is a design showing that the decking area itself will be kept away from the adjacent residential use to the east and be limited to that wavy lined area that you see there on the plans. Additionally, in the conditions of approval, staff is recommending that there be limitations on the uses that can occur in that area and the hours in which it can be used. Next slide, please. This is an elevation of the hotel from the front, which would be the south elevation. And the original designs had a different articulation or architectural style. Some members of the public pointed out as well as staff that the hotel design was lacking in terms of compliance with the Seacliffe Village Plan, which requires an art deco style. In the opinions of staff and evaluating the changes made since those public comments were received would agree that this does achieve art deco design elements. And the coloration also at one point in time had been more of a pink and then they've changed it to this more moderate yellowish tan color, which we think is probably more appropriate as well. Next slide. These are the side elevations. They really are sides. One side on the east will be facing the adjacent residents. The side on the west will be facing one of the RV parks. Kind of good that there's not a lot of windows on those sides, which we think will help with privacy to neighbors. Next slide. This is the rear of the property facing the railroad tracks. And there will be windows and so forth for egress and light and so forth, but we assume this area won't be a high use activity. And it's a back of a building, but it's adequately articulated. Next slide, please. So in terms of offsite improvements, you can see here, this is in a different orientation where north is actually to the left of the drawing. Broadway is shown heading up to the right and north up to the top of the drawing there. The applicant is proposing to resurface the entirety of North Avenue and Broadway and provide frontage improvements on one side. In other words, along the hotel frontage on North Avenue and along the west side of Broadway, which is the bottom of the drawing. And they're also managing their storm water and will be installing an 18-inch storm drain that connects to existing facilities, would connect to existing facilities in center Avenue. Next slide, please. This is a landscape plan, as I said, there's not a lot of landscaping proposed. And it does show some of the tree cover in the back that would be retained. Along the left side there, there is a drainage that passes through this area and then goes into a pipe that goes under the RV park. That is something that's not being resolved as a part of this project. It would require a much larger diameter pipe to center Avenue. I think approximately 60 inches is what was talked about. And the applicant's not proposing to install that. I think the cost is an issue. But they are proposing to remove five trees along the rear of the property. Three of those trees would be located in the railroad right-of-way, the RTC property. And we do have permission from them in your packet and the correspondence. There was some information from the project Arborist claiming these would be significant trees. They're close to being considered significant trees, but we would not call them that. In the coastal zone, significant trees are protected from removal and when they are removed, substantial trees are usually required as replacements. However, they are proposing replacements and along the landscape strip and at the front of the property, these would be smaller trees, given the limited landscape area and not wanting to try to force a large tree into a small area where it would not be healthy and not perform well. Next slide. So one of the issues that came up was traffic. And some people were concerned with general traffic in the area. Some people concerned with other things like wanting it to be a residential project to address affordable housing concerns. And although that is perhaps merited and warranted given our current situation, this is a site that's designated for visitor accommodations. It would be difficult. I wouldn't necessarily say impossible, but it does come to mind to change it from a visitor accommodation site in the coastal zone. We would in effect meet a lot of resistance from the Coastal Commission if we attempted to do that. We would also need to amend the Sea Cliff Village plan as well as the zoning and general plan land use designation. So a hotel is the most appropriate use for this site. But one of the things that was a concern is residents along North Avenue said people are cutting through their neighborhood and they're worried that visitors to the hotel, not knowing better, would just pass through their area and cross additional traffic and conflicts for them. We talked about that. They had requested a gate. Supervisor Friend in the public meeting that was held in December of 2021 did not think that was a great idea because of emergency vehicles needing to access in both directions and more access points is better. As staff, we heard that and we looked at the possibility of having two bullbouts reducing the width of the roadway there and then having signage and striping with some examples shown below. These are from the city of Santa Cruz and that they have offset islands. We would be proposing having islands that are next to each other across from each other. But it gives the general idea of how traffic would be restricted. And the applicant, we've added that as a project condition, the applicant has indicated they would be willing to pay for that as part of their roadway improvements. So I think I've covered most of the areas that I wanted to in this initial presentation and I would say that includes the staff presentation and I'm prepared for questions. We'll go to the next slide or just close the presentation either one side. Thank you. Oh, I forgot to say the staff recommendation. That's kind of an important part. As proposing condition, the project is consistent with the county code, general plan, local coastal program and see Cliff Village plan and staff recommends adoption of the negative declaration for the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act and approval of application 201-003. Thank you. I had a question, chair. Yes, thank you. I just want to thank Mr. Adams really quickly and let everyone know that now would be the time to move to commission questions. So thank you. Please commissioner Shepherd, go ahead. I wonder if Mr. Adams, you could go through the public involvement with this project you mentioned a meeting. I was looking through the staff report for the notes from that, but I didn't see it. So could you tell me what's been the public interaction with this? And my second question was, is there a will serve letter from the Soap Hill Water District? Yes, definitely those are all good questions. So the comments came in. And so what I did in the packet and perhaps I could have done it differently as I put the comments that came in in the order that they were received in terms of date order. And so we had a sewer will serve that had come in before a lot of the comments were received. We've actually received a few will serve letters. This project was on hold during a lot of the pandemic. So some of those will serve letters needed to be extended. And so the bulk of the comments you have in that packet were before the neighborhood meetings, the neighborhood meeting results are on page 153 because that was when we received that material. And so following that, we have the water will serve letter from Soquel Creek, which was actually a renewal of the letter because it's been renewed or extended twice. That's on page 159. And that pushes the expiration to March 2nd of 2023. And so as you'd asked a lot of those comments came in before we had the neighborhood meeting. So in response to the first posting we had on the site, which was for the environmental document comment period that generated a lot of comments from the neighbors. That's when we first heard from them in mass and it was unclear if the applicant had held a neighborhood meeting of any size or proper notification before starting the application. So we said, you know, this is a requirement. You have to do this. And we knew that your commission will be looking for that. So they held a meeting at that time. It was a virtual meeting. I would say it was well attended. There was still a lot of tension within the community because the contractor that had been using that to help with actually a public works project was not necessarily, I don't think they were necessarily seeing eye to eye with the neighborhood and they weren't, even their communication during that meeting, I don't think was really very friendly. Didn't really seem to help much. So a lot of people really agitated. A lot of trucks were coming and going. There was a lot of noise, a lot of heavy equipment and that was upsetting to them. And so others who had provided comments about the C-Cliff village and about just general traffic controls not including the contractor. Those were the issues we tried to address. The project applicant was able to have the contractor leave the site shortly after that. And we've been in communication with some of the neighbors that have all been talking amongst themselves. And I've received some verbal and other communications that they're glad to hear that we're considering doing a traffic restriction. And I would assume that they would also have liked the building design changes, but I have not heard back from anybody regarding that. No, I would say that it's always good to put the neighborhood meeting in a prominent place. And we can look at that because that's kind of a summary of a lot of people come to that rather than at the end. And yeah, the will serve letters always something. Just one more quick question, which is, I understand the parking places for the visitors and the manager is there any parking for any other like where the hotel cleaners will park and other staff like the person who serves breakfast and so on and so forth? Well, we do require parking requirements per the county code standards. And so the county code standards is one per room. However, the current frontage improvements along both Broadway and North are unrefined. So some vehicles kind of park on the shoulder there some don't, but what will happen is that with the installation of a formal curb and gutter along both Broadway and North, there will be parallel parking available along both of those areas. And those would be able to be used by anybody, including people and service workers who would be working at the hotel or others. Yeah, so you're saying there's going to be enough off street parking to accommodate hotel cleaners, breakfast servers, i.e. staff. Yes? That all depends on how many parking spaces are utilized in the neighborhood and how densely people occupy. It's the same story that we have everywhere. I can't guarantee that there's going to be sufficient on street parking, but at this point in time and from the photos you saw, that was during the daytime, which is one of these folks that you've mentioned would come and go. There was plenty of parking in the area, maybe in the evenings, if residents of the RV parks or the adjacent neighborhood fill up the area, it might be a little bit more of a challenge, but it has not appeared to be so far. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Any other commissioners have questions for staff? Go ahead, I'll go after. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, were you? Commissioner Leslie, go ahead. Thank you. Yes, on page 16, there was a requirement that you meet all the requirements set by the fire department. I didn't see any correspondence on that. Not a question. That was for Mr. Adams. Yeah, we've received comments from all the review agencies and the fire department has said that the project is okay to move forward. They have standard fire code requirements brought with sprinklers. All of the things that you would see in a building code compliance and they're okay with the project moving forward. That's the combined process of the Central Fire District. We generally don't include all of the fire agency comments, but we did cover that also in the negative declaration document which is separate from the staff report, but we could talk about that more if you have questions. Okay, thank you. And on page 19, I have a question. Under the operational conditions, it says that it's a visitor accommodation limited to 19 suites or rooms and limited to the time period specified in the county code. Permanent occupancy of any room or suite is not allowed. Now in your slide presentation, you had the one for the ground floor and there is reference to a private apartment there on the ground floor. Would that be permanently occupied? Correct, the manager's unit would not be subject to the 19 rooms restriction on 30 day or less but under 30 day usage for short term rentals. So would that be the 20th room or the accommodation or you don't count that? Those operational requirements are not applied to that manager's unit. It's applied to the 19 guest rooms that are on the second and third floors. Okay, thank you. And that's it for me. Thank you, commissioner Lays and B. Commissioner Dan, were you up next? I'll go after commissioner Villalomte. Please go ahead. I just wanted staff to clarify something for the public. So if you have questions, please go ahead. Yeah, and hi Randall, good to see you. It's been a while. I had a question about the traffic calming condition which is condition six on page 15. Can you, cause I am familiar with these in the city of Santa Cruz and I often think that they cause more problems than people think they want them but they actually don't work as intended. Could you explain why you think it's a good idea to have this? Well, I think it's a good idea because functionally it's a deterrent to people driving that direction from the hotel or possibly from the RV parks or if there's other development on Broadway in the future. And it still allows emergency vehicles to go both directions. And that's really the most important thing. There are people who will just drive through it going the other direction. I assume you've probably observed that happening in the city of Santa Cruz. I've only observed that. That's the only way that you see people driving is the opposite direction. Yeah, no, I think in the city of Santa Cruz it's a little bit different. Their traffic engineering is a little different in the county. I don't want to get into that political but it seems like they've placed them in areas to really kind of force traffic onto major thoroughfares. And so I think they have a lot more problems than we would have here. This functions basically as a dead end street with kind of a minor back access to North Avenue. And I don't know we'd have to hear from some of the North Avenue residents as to how many of them actually access their property that way. I looked at the next street over actually has better paving. So I would assume that that's probably the way I would go if I lived there. And I think mostly it was more kind of weighing it versus what would it be like to have a gate there? Have absolute restriction. And hearing from the neighbors that it was really kind of either or. Like if we didn't put something that at least gave the indication that people weren't supposed to go through there that they were not only going to oppose the project but probably go after the owner. And so we were concerned about that. And we felt that if the owner was willing to do it and the neighborhood was happy with it and it allowed emergency vehicles to go both ways then we didn't see much harm in it. I don't think it's gonna cause up the kinds of problems that some of the ones they use in the city do for the reasons I mentioned. Okay. Yeah, I agree with you about the result of what happens in the city which is not necessarily desirable. So since you mentioned the gate like I heard you mentioned that in your staff presentation how is that even allowed on a county road? We can't put in a gate and block access when it's a public road. Is that correct? Well, I think your statement is correct but this is not a county road. Interesting fact, not having done deep, deep title research but from our understanding is that both Broadway and North Avenue are not only not county maintained they don't seem to be maintained at all. There's no maintenance district. There's no CSA. There's no responsible party. It's just whoever gets together to do it. And to the point that when working with road engineering staff it was kind of challenging to have them work with what the standards should be for this roadway. And that's actually why we're not asking the applicant to improve the opposite side of the road because it seems like the way that some of the vehicles park perpendicular to the traffic flow actually may accommodate more vehicles along that RV park that's to the south of the property. And if those properties do ultimately get redeveloped at some point in time they would come along with appropriate improvements. So the gate was something that we did talk about and the legal aspect of that is like who would it be? Would it be all the people on the subdivision map? Would it be all of the neighbors that would have to sign off on it? Who would it be that would need, yeah. But also the county has a right of way through the road. Is that correct? It's difficult to say. It may just be a right of way that people who on the subdivision map have access to and a judge may decide that it's a public right of way. But as far as I understand it is not actually something that was ever deeded or offered to the county from the subdivision map. It does not indicate that it was offered to anyone. And up until fairly recently it was owned by a gentleman who ended up selling off pieces of it to people including the hotel property. Okay, well, I guess I just say in general in the future that we shouldn't be gating off our communities here. I agree. So that's fine. I'll go along with the traffic calming project. So the other question I had was about, it's on page 19. It's condition 5B2 about the operating hours of the rooftop deck. And it just seemed like since there's no events, no amplified music allowed it just seems a little restrictive to have those hours be cut off by nine o'clock when the noise ordinance starts at 10. So I assume that was some sort of compromise for the neighbors. And then the hotel also abuts to the rail corridor. And on the other side is poor Claire's. So it seems like, you know, there's neighbors to one side and the other side, but not on the back. So anyway, I'm just saying like the more amenities that a hotel has, such as a rooftop deck, higher the cost will be for people to stay there. And I saw a lot of concerns from the neighbors that they over and over, they just said they didn't want it to be a budget hotel. I'm just gonna put it out there that you don't want it to be a budget hotel than having amenities like a rooftop deck is a selling point. So, you know, I thought that was a little restrictive, but I just want to hear from others. That was it. Thank you, Randall. Good stop report. Hey, thank you, Commissioner Dan. I didn't have any questions, Commissioner Vellante. So if you wanted to say your last, the piece that you're waiting on. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that, Chair Gordon. I just, I have one question I believe probably from Mr. Johnston. And then I was hoping that either he or Mr. Adams can provide just a question that I noticed coming up and up repeatedly in the comments that I'm hoping they can directly address before we open up for public comment. Mr. Johnson, I read through kind of the tree removal report and I just, I'm looking to you for your expertise on whether or not your, is my only question whether you're satisfied with the tree replanting plan based on your knowledge of kind of what's on site and then what's possible. Just because I thought that, I looked at the image Randall put up even in the staff report and it's all those kinds of sparse on details are just like your opinion on that. So the initially, thank you. Hello, commissioners. Matt Johnston, environmental coordinator. The initial plans didn't show any vegetation on the parcel itself. Further investigation found a lot of trees on the edges, as well as the palm and I think one of the privates on the very front corner. My biggest concern were the trees that are not on the property, but in the root zone. And we did have a significant back and forth with the arborist on methods to protect the root zones for those trees. I think that there's a good chance that those will be successful. Obviously can't predict the future when it comes to working in root zones of trees. So with those, I was satisfied that we're doing everything. The mitigations are as much as we can in place. The trees that are impacted on the railroad property are just under significant size. So it would be nice to retain them if we could, but there is no requirement to retain them. The, we initially asked for the trees to be replanted. The rail line that the RTC did not want any trees being planted in that area. So the only replacement trees I'm aware of are the landscaping trees that will come in to replace those trees. But again, they're not as a requirement of a significant tree removal. So I personally would like to see lots of trees everywhere on this site. The site has been fully developed and there's without a legal requirement to enforce that they have to plant trees then I am satisfied that they are meeting our code. Thank you for that clarity. And then I think there's question that I could set I think may be more properly answered by you, but Mr. Adams maybe, which is a lot of the comments I think, and this is just a thing that I think we see time and time again from the public which is confusion perhaps is the best word for it on what a negative declaration means. And there was a lot of comments that there wasn't an EIR done and there wasn't environmental review done. And I was just hoping that one of you perhaps just could provide information on what that means in terms of environmental review because I think there's a perception that a neg deck means that there's, that we didn't do secret that there wasn't environmental review. So I was just hoping that you could provide just a short primer perhaps on what that is because I just noticed it was a comment that came up time and time again and I was just hope that was the question I had that maybe you did. Yes, happy to short primer on the SQL process whenever a project that has either a discretionary approval such as this or public funds spent the first step in the SQL process is determine whether an exemption applies. In this case, there are potential impacts an exemption did not apply. The next step is to do an initial study. The initial study is looks at all the different aspects where an impact might be in place and if that impact can be mitigated it becomes a mitigated negative declaration which is the case in this one. And those impacts it's your as a commission and it's your obligation to determine whether those mitigations are significant offset the impacts, not to say that there are no impacts but that the impacts that are there are less than significant. If we determine either through our process in the planning department or through your process in this deliberation that there are impacts that are not adequately mitigated from as a result of this project that would trigger an environmental impact report. It's our opinion from the planning department that this one is mitigated to a less than significant degree and you are under no obligation to agree with us but you are obliged to review the initial study and review the mitigation plan and make a determination as a commission as whether you agree with that determination. So EIRs typically there are a few cases where we jump straight to an EIR but for the most part it's a result of the initials study process and the resulting comments that we receive and the resulting mitigations that come out of that process. I just wanted to clarify for the public that this was an environmental review process that occurred that resulted in the negative declaration and that's what I was hoping you could. And further just a little more on that we did receive comments from Department of Fish and Wildlife looking at impacts on birds and we added as a result of that we added mitigation for the bird surveys because there are potentially birds nesting in the areas where trees would be impacted. So that's part of the sequel process when we get comments we make a determination whether we've got to step it up or whether a mitigation can apply. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. And thank you to our Gordon for indulging in letting that a cold primer happen. I just think it was often confusion from the public when we're saying negative declaration I think the public often thinks we were saying is that there's no need for environmental review but what that means is that there was environmental review done and it's what we could be doing today would be determining negative declaration but I just wanted to put that out there for the public before we go into public comment. Can I further clarify some of Please, yeah, no. Perhaps the environmental coordinator maybe revised some of the statements that he made. In fact, this application was determined to be a negative declaration. There are no mitigations and I want to be really clear about that because we looked at some of these items and issues and one of the things we did receive was that letter from Fish and Wildlife and what we looked at was we looked at both the biotic habitat potential for this drainage that opens into a small open pool at the back of the property. That had not actually been something that was of concern in the prior approval of about 10 years ago, but since that time there had been some willows and other things that had come up and you'll see the information in your packet that there was an evaluation by a biologist that actually just like with the significant trees it's like, well, yeah, there's some features here but not to the point where we would call it habitat area of any significance. There are no impacts to that that therefore are significant. And so we looked at, you know, do we need to add mitigations to the prior negative declaration that we had circulated? And we came to the conclusion that we did not. Some people might argue otherwise but again, both of these efforts are the negative declaration was, I feel a robust document. There were issues that were raised that were then addressed as part of the comment period and those materials are discussed in the staff board analysis as well as those materials included in your packet. So I do believe your commission has enough information if you choose to follow the staff and environmental coordinators recommendation that this is adequate as a negative declaration and that was a process of environmental review for the California Environmental Quality Act. Thank you. Yeah, and I apologize for stating that. That was, it's been a year since we went through that initial study process but Randall is 100% accurate. We did determine that the conditions, the issues that were raised were not significant but the conditions could apply to further reduce impacts. Thank you both, I appreciate it. Okay, thank you. Really appreciate that explanation and helping us understand that and be really clear with that. Then at this time, we can move to the public comment portion of this hearing and how this is gonna work similar to the last one. We'll have time for the applicant to speak first and usually a lot of 10 minutes. And then right after that, if there are any other questions of the applicant by the commission, we'll hear those and then we'll continue on to public comment with ending with the applicant having another five minutes to discuss anything else that came up. That's kind of the process. And Ms. Drake, do we have the applicant here today and wanting to speak on the project? I am actually, I am not seeing the applicant in the list of attendees. If the applicant is with us, please raise your hand or press star nine on your phone. If we don't have them here today, then that's a little simpler. We can just move on to public comment and if they happen to jump in, we can give them some time. Okay, sounds good. Thank you. I'm seeing a hand raised by Rebecca Downing. Good morning, Rebecca. Please restate your name for the record. You have three minutes. Yes, good morning commissioners. Can you hear me? Yes. Great. My name is Rebecca Downing and I live at the other end of North Avenue from the development proposed for your approval today. When I moved to C-Cliff 20 years ago, I was looking forward to the improvements that were described in the C-Cliff village plan adopted in 2003, including the potential development of a hotel at 270 North Avenue. As I got to know my neighbors, many in the community hoped that the improvement project proposed for our downtown would be developed into an attractive area for residents and visitors. A similar hotel project as mentioned here proposed to our community did not receive final approval by the county and the amendment to the coastal, to the C-Cliff village plan from the coastal commission until the recession arrived in 2009 and the funding for this project was no longer available. Our downtown beautification public works project is still waiting for funding. And the local businesses have improved all their buildings and facilities. So the hotel proposed now would benefit those merchants who have invested in our downtown despite our improvement project delays. So I ask the commission that you approve this project for our community, for myself. I don't have a lot of room for visitors in my house. So I would love to recommend this hotel for their future visits. Thank you. Thank you, Rebecca. All right. Do we have any other members of the public who wish to speak on this item, the proposed hotel? So please raise your hand by pressing star nine or raising the hand icon on the zoom app. I'm not seeing any additional hands raised trail. Turn it back over to you. Okay, great. Wonderful. Thank you. Appreciate the comments, Ms. Downing. And then at this time, we go ahead and close the public comment and bring this item back to the commission for discussion and what any commissioners like to speak regarding this project. I think that developer came, the applicant came a long way and in meeting the needs of the community, I think we saw that from the community meeting, they changed the design of the project and they were willing to make changes to the roadway. So my recommendation would be to approve the staff recommendations. I would support that. I don't see any reason why this projection with board, it fits the zoning, if it's a general plan, it fits the site standards. So I'm ready to take a vote. I'm in agreement with that and I appreciate the hard work that has gone into making this complement the neighborhood and be, a good project for the neighborhood that meets code, not a lot of no variances or anything like that, requested makes it really nice. I did wanna follow up on one thing commissioner Dan mentioned was the limitation on the rooftop deck. And I would also just wonder like is 10 PM too late? Is this something that neighborhood's been pushing back on or if it fits the noise ordinance and if it was me going to a hotel by the beach, I'd love to sit out and fill a desk and watch the sunset and all the rest. So I don't know if that's something that we would want to adjust, just bringing that back up since it was brought up earlier. I don't know if any of the others- Is it now at 10 o'clock? No, it's at nine o'clock. So I mean, in the summertime, I think Tim's right. Like honestly, in the summertime, that's still sunset. So to think that the hotel is gonna kick people off the deck while they're watching the sun go down in July, seems like that's just not gonna happen. Well, I would agree. When we vote on it, I would, if someone wants to put a change to that limitation, I would support it. Let's see, I asked a question and it looks like Mr. Adams has something to say. So. You're muted, Randall. Randall, we can't hear you. You're unmuted in Zoom, but I think did you tap your headphones and get yourself here? You got it, thank you. Double mute. Yeah, so I think 10 o'clock would be fine. The idea was to protect some of the neighbors. We've heard that there are some perhaps sensitive receptors in the immediate vicinity that might be disturbed by noises. And so the idea was not that there wouldn't be events or anything, but even one or two people who may or may not have had some beverages might make some noise up there. And so the idea was to keep it a little bit more controlled, but it is more difficult for us to regulate things that don't conform to the actual noise hours, because after 10, it can be something that the sheriff can be called. And if they don't, if they have enough time, they would be able to come in and deal with that. And so I wouldn't wanna push it to something other than late. I wouldn't wanna go later than 10. But I think that if your commission feels that that's something that would be okay. And we haven't heard from neighbors that, you know, that the hours are or a big issue for them. I think going to 10 would be great. So that would be actually an amendment on page 19, Exhibit C, operational condition, Roman numeral, VB2, and we would just change the hours. It would read instead of between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. would read between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. It's really just changing the nine to a 10. And if one of you wanted to include that in your motion, there's staff sees no reason why that would be a problem. Okay, thank you for that explanation. I appreciate that. And I totally understand. I think having it line up with more standard hours makes, takes a lot of pressure off everyone to keep track of what's going on and limits, you know, challenging interactions, I would say. So I'd be in support of that if another commissioner wanted to make that motion. Are we at that point yet? Tim just can't make the, then I think it's the problem. Oh, I don't think that we technically had a motion yet. No, I don't think so. So are we right now? Yes, unless there's further, even, you know, we can, I think we'd be looking forward to a motion right now. And then if we had further conversation, we could continue that after the motion also. It seems like we're all similarly aligned. We're ready for that. Commissioner, go ahead. Commissioner Lacey, did you have something to add? Okay. I can make the motion. I move that we accept the staff recommendations on item number eight and his agenda for the hotel with one amendment, which would be on page 19 under the operational conditions B to change the limited hours of the rooftop from eight a.m. to nine p.m. to eight a.m. to 10 p.m. But keep the prohibition of having any amplified music. I'll second that motion. Wonderful. Thank you, Commissioner Leaves and Ian Shepherd. We have a motion and a second. Would there, would any other commissioners like to discuss anything at this time before a vote? No, I think as you said, Commissioner Gordon, Chair Gordon, I think it's nice to have a project where there's not variances and all these things. It's a nice, clean project. Yes. Good job. Let's go. All right, let's do it. Can we please have a roll call vote, Ms. Drake? Okay. Commissioner Vialante. Yes. All right, and Commissioner Shepard. Yes. Commissioner Lazenby. Yes. Commissioner Dan. Yes. And Chair Gordon. Yes. All right. All in favor. Aye. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks, Randall. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that great report. And with that, we can close that item and move on to agenda item number eight. This is project application 211083, located at Bresem V Old Mount Road in Felton. I'm understanding this project has been withdrawn over Ms. Drake. I'm not sure if there is any staff discussion or presentation that you'd like to present. Yes, I thought I'll be presenting for this item this morning. And I just thought I would make a few brief comments, just mainly for the benefit of the public since our published agenda is a little bit different than the mail agenda that we sent out. So just briefly, I did provide a quick overview of the status of this application, which is 211083, which consists of a proposal to allow for a new cannabis operation at 375 Old Mount Road in a letter to the commissions. You have those in your pocket. But just a quick synopsis of the events leading up to the letter that I wrote, I think would be helpful. As your commission will recall, back in July, on July 13th, the commission considered an appeal of the zoning administrator's decision to prove application 21103. And as you'll recall, or some of you will, we had a lot of alternates at that meeting actually, but as some of you will recall at the conclusion of that meeting, the commission appealed the appeal and actually denied the application. In doing so, the commission cited several areas of concern in support of its denial. However, the findings for denial were not made by the commission at the time. So then fast forward, beyond the commission meeting, subsequent to that meeting, the applicant did appeal the commission's decision to the board of supervisors. The board determined that the commission erred in that it did not adopt findings for denial. And the board opted to remand the item back to the planning commission with a direction to adopt findings. And so today's staff had actually intended on returning to the commission with the intent to assist in drafting findings for denial. However, last week, the applicant withdrew the application. And that's a semi-unique situation. It happens actually regularly here in our office for projects that aren't as high profile. And in situations where this happens, where an application is withdrawn, staff ceases all work on an application we no longer have an application to work on. So in this case, because there is no longer an application on which to act, the matter of making findings is now moot. And staff is recommending at this time that the planning commission do no further work on the project and to direct staff to place an item on the next board agenda and notify in the board that the application has been withdrawn. So that is my recommendation. There's to the facts and happy to answer any questions. We also have Justin Graham with us this morning from County Council's office. If you have any legal questions, thanks. Thank you, Ms. Drake. Did any commissioners have questions on this? Not really, okay. Be straightforward. We, I believe this was noticed as public hearing originally. And so we do need to follow through with that an open public comment if there is any. However, I would like to remind that everyone of the public that this application has officially been withdrawn. There is no further application. And so comments maybe, you know, you may adjust your comments with that knowledge knowing that this project won't proceed as of right now. So we're recommending that it be removed by the board's supervisors. And so let's, with that being said, let's do open up the public comment, Ms. Drake. Okay. And I am seeing a hand raise by Josh. So we'll start with Josh. Good morning. Please state your full name for the record. You have three minutes. Can you guys hear me now? Yes, hello. Hi, this is Josh Leichter. I'm an immediate neighbor to this parcel at 13,001 East Sianti Road. And I'm also representing a group of neighbors that were opposing this application called the Old Mount Protectors. And I really just wanted to take a moment to thank the commission for your integrity, wisdom, and for listening to the neighbors and the environment and your decision to deny this application was before you. We're grateful that I've had your partnership in protecting the land, the water and the community. That's all I have to say. Thank you so much. Thanks, Josh. Alrighty, I'm going back to the list. Any other members of the public wish to speak on this item? If so, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. I'm seeing, oh, a hand just popped up by Tom. Tom, good morning. Please state your name for the record. You have three minutes. There we go. My name is Tom Kenville. I am an immediate neighbor of the parcel that was the 585 Mount Road. I do have a concern. The concern basically is, are we going to be revisiting this with another application pretty much for the same project once more? I would really appreciate if the findings that were worked on and the background for them by the commission would at least be written up and appended to the commission the attempt to have this project so that at least there is a documentation of the findings that the staff has made and the backing for same findings. That was my concern and I give you back the microphone. Thank you so much. Thanks, Tom. Yep. All right. Are there any further comments? Well, I wanted to ask us on them. What about, can you respond to that? Because there were findings that were developed who just don't, we aren't working on them anymore but staff went to the trouble to make the post findings. They just didn't need to come to us. So are those a matter of public records someplace? No, because we did not continue along the trajectory that we initially were on when we had an active application which was to make findings for denial, adopt findings for denial as directed by the board. Since the application has been withdrawn, we do not have an application to continue to work on. We still have the record, the public record with the concerns raised by the commission in making their action for denial. So we would just rely on those on that record if a future application was submitted. And to Tom's question about would an application be submitted in the future? An application could be submitted in the future regardless of whether or not it's been withdrawn or it was denied and we move forward in the future. My understanding is the applicant does not have any intention of submitting an application at least anytime in the near future. But that could happen regardless of whether or not the application was withdrawn. Thank you for that, Ms. Drake. Did we have any other public comment? Didn't appear so, but just want to verify. I'm not seeing any additional hands raised. So I'll officially turn it back over to you. Okay, yeah, then we can close the public comment. Thank you. And then any other commissioners have any questions or comments? Well, we did work on findings. So I guess if there was ever need there, there's still some in someone's file. I mean, they never came into fruition because we didn't need them, but they were developed. So that is true. Well, Mr. Shepard, maybe I should jump in here. You know, the reason this was referred back from the board was to make findings. And the last time this was before the commission, no specific findings were made, although concerns were raised. No specific findings were made for denial of the application. And so that's probably the take-home lesson here is that if we are going to take an action, we should make specific findings required by our code. Agreed, and it's water over the dam that was last day of our last county council's tenure. So let's just close. Okay, thank you for that. And I appreciate everyone's input. And then at this time, if anyone is willing to make a motion, I think it'd be appropriate. I will move the staff's recommendation on this item. And I will just go ahead. I was just seconding your motion. Okay, thank you. My district, so I want to have my name on it. Well, I'm happy to rescind my motion and let you make the motion. Not a problem. I would just say there was a suggestion in the brief staff memo that potentially there could be a training for planning commissioners, especially with regard to this issue. I know that when we have the rare instance where we made a different decision than was the staff's recommendation, we have both continued the item and have it come back with findings for denial. And then also we have just done it on the fly and revise the findings to turn them into findings of denial. So like I wasn't at this meeting, but I think that efficient training is to be done that you include the alternates because I do feel bad for our alternates that they don't get to have the experience of being at these meetings regularly and often they just come for one or two a year. And so it's really hard on them to have something complex. And so maybe county council could even kind of preview what the options are and what needs to happen with each option when there's a meeting like this, especially if there's alternates there or do some sort of training with our alternates would be helpful. Those are both certainly viable options and that will take that into consideration. And I do think just as part of our regular business commissioner Dan, we do intend on doing a training next year and we will definitely include the alternates. We haven't done one in a long time. Moving forward, Justin and I will definitely look and I think supported by the chair and the other commissioners will look to support the commission in providing options to be able to make the findings in the future. That was definitely something we should have done at the last meeting or in the July meeting. So all great options continue and I'll stop to take those comments that you provide and draft a draft of findings for denial. Sometimes we can do it on the fly. As you mentioned, another option is to take a recess. I do that sometimes as a zone administrator if it looks like we could pretty quickly draft something but we don't wanna pontificate as part of the hearing. We can take a brief recess, I'll stop to take a stab at it. We've done that. I think we did that recently in one of Sheila's projects and it worked out pretty well. So all great options, training though, we'll take care of a lot of this confusion and I apologize, staff is definitely a partially responsible for what happened. So anyhow. I was embarrassed though. I was not making any judgment about any of that. Oh, it's okay. No, no, that's a great idea. It was a very singular hearing. So let's not read. I think it's better to just to go on from here. Okay, but yeah, so anyways. All right, so we have a motion and a second, sorry chair. That's okay. Commissioner and Dan, did you have a final thought that you wanted this? I can't remember. I think I was just gonna say, I've been here for 16 years and I never had a training. So I think when new people come for sure, that's a great idea. We'll definitely address that then. I mean, I don't feel like I need it now, but. Yeah. All right. Thank you everyone. Good discussion on that. We do have a motion and a second. And so if we're ready, could we go ahead and take a vote on this mystery? Yes. Commissioner Lazenby. Yes. Commissioner Dan. Yes. Commissioner Villalante. Yes. Commissioner Shepard. Yes. And chair Gordon. Yes. All right. Motion passes. Hey, great. Thank you everyone. That gets through the item number eight and we're on to agenda item number nine, which the planning director's report. Do we have a planning director's report today, Ms. Drake? The planning director is actually out on the training today. He notified me that he would not be attending today's meetings, so no planning director's report. Okay. That's good. Thank you. Then let's move on to the next agenda item, report on upcoming meeting dates. Yes. So I was hoping we could just have one meeting in October with a couple of presentations on that agenda. However, it's looking like we might have two short agendas. One, or the meeting of October 12th and one for the meeting of October 26th. They're both presentations. One would be that water presentation. Looks like that's shaping up for October 12th. We have another presentation lining up, which is going to be given by our county administrator's office, our new analyst. I'm not quite sure what the content of that is. So light agendas, maybe two meetings. I'll see if I can get them on one. Are you saying that we're having two meetings in October and that each of those meetings is just gonna be a presentation? That's the way it's shaping up. That's just for an action body. And I mean, unless it's something critical, I really, our time is valuable. Tim's time is valuable. I mean, you know. Yeah, I'll see what I can do. The issue really was without water presentation, there's a number of presenters and they lined up for the 12th. And so let me, I hear you, Commissioner Dan. Let me see what I can do there. And then also for the water presentation, I mean, I don't have a really clear idea what the purpose is of that, except obviously learning about our water supply in the county is important, but it's extremely varied depending on where you live. You're in Watsonville, if you're at the North Coast, if you're in Santa Cruz. So I guess I would also like there to be some purpose for it. So I'm like, I mean, it's great to have information, but you can also just send us a memo. I don't know. So I just want there to be some sort of substance to why we're being talked at for a couple of hours, especially for those of us who already kind of have a really good overview. Because I imagine it's gonna be an overview. So a lot of us pretty kind of know that I know Commissioner Villalante is on some regional board for water. So I'd like to know. The only thing we haven't heard from the blind directors, what is this forward-wise doing it? Maybe he can tell us. What's the purpose? I think it was informational. I think there were some questions that were raised about water availability during the sustainability update. And I think that he thought it would be a good time to do an overview of the state of water in the county. And that is why it's been challenging to finalize a date for this one because they are planning on having multiple representatives from different water agencies available. I hear what you're saying though, Commissioner Dan, and I think the primary benefit could be for the public. And as Commissioner Shepard pointed out at the last meeting, the outrage is probably critical. And what we do for a matter that is county-wide as we just post the notice in the paper. So I don't know how many people would even be aware of the presentation item at that point. So I will follow up with the CDI director. I will bump some items around so you don't meet twice. I sort of expected that. I know I've been doing the same thing. I'm like, can we? So I will do that. We'll meet once, see if we can bump things to November, like the analyst's presentation if possible. And yeah, I'll reach out to Matt and see what he has to say about the water presentation. So thank you for the feedback. We did have one more question. Why wouldn't he wanna do this at the board of supervisors? So he gets much more of the public involved. Why use the planning commission, which doesn't get a big audience, but the board does? Why not? And I'm sure the board members would like to hear the presentation as well. Why not just do it for them? And make it a public hearing. And I think they'll get a lot more wider participation. So a lot more people listen to board meetings. Okay, that's good feedback. I will reach out to Matt Machado later today and discuss these concerns with him. And I couldn't shoot with him out. I'm sure I'd like to have a title on a couple sentences of the purpose or the scope of this or something. You'll receive in your pocket a memo outlining the presentation. That's what I've requested. I haven't seen it yet. So I don't know what exactly the content is proposed to be, but I will check in with Matt and see what we can do there. And yeah, I will consolidate the presentations with other actionable items. Thank you, Joe. I just think would you bring up to him, that maybe this would be more appropriate at the board level so it gets wider public hearing. Okay. Yeah, I guess my concern to Rachel's point is what is the purpose? So is the point, because I think there is. I mean, like she mentioned, I sit on the regional water board. This is a significant benefit for us as a sending land use authority understanding the state of water, but our time is valuable and I don't want us to spend like three hours being lectured at, but it is a complex issue that you could easily spend three hours being lectured at, but is the purpose to educate us as the body or is the purpose to educate the public? Because, you know, Mid County Groundwater Agency, the Santa Margarita Water Agency, they've had several public kind of water forums lately that they've advertised and I guess I'm just confused about is this an expansion of that? In which case it's for the public or is it for us? And I liked to hopefully you can be our conduit to understand so it's for us, they tailor it to us. So we're not being, I don't want to, we went through the sustainability update. We got, you know, these big, big presentations and it's a lot of content and it's hard to absorb and I want to make sure that it's like coming for us that it's, you know, 20 minute because my understanding is it's so concrete it's Santa Cruz Water District and I think it's our own water managers here, right? And I think it's the third presenter. And so I want to make sure that we're not getting like three, three hour presentations even though you could, right? There's such weighty topics. So yeah, I think that just, I think if they can understand why they're presenting to us, I think like literally ask them why are you coming to this body? Make sure you keep that in mind when you're crafting what it is you're bringing to them. It would just be helpful, I think for me in terms of, and I think we're actually we're asking you to be there. I want to ask that question. I'm doing it. So thank you for doing that. It is very regional. I've been to probably five presentations in the Santa, you know, the Santa Margarita Board is they've had a lot of public hearings which I've attended. So, but no, I don't expect anybody who's not part of that center of concern would know anything about it. Well, if they present to the board, you know, Planning Commission can always login and listen to that presentation or watch the video or listen to the minutes as well. So, okay, great. Thank you. I will be the conduit and I will sort out the meetings and I will shoot everybody a quick update email about the future agendas for October so you can schedule around any canceled meetings. So it looks like we might have, there's still time for us to get project reservations from the planners. So we're not going to know for another week or so about the October 12th meeting for sure. But I will definitely follow back up with you guys. Just really quickly about meetings. I did send out an email poll to the Planning Commissioners regarding returning to in-person meetings of the chambers. I only heard back from two commissioners and one of those respondents expressed a desire to just go ahead and wait until the first of the year to resume in-person meetings. And given the fact that we're gonna have a light agenda, I think for the next few months, anyhow, that might be a better start times, like new year, post-holiday, hopefully post-initial wave of flu season timing. So I might propose resuming at the beginning of January since we did get at least one commissioner who expressed interest in doing so, but I thought I would just check in with everyone and see if that's doable for everybody, if everyone is okay with that. Well, I guess I was the other one who responded. I was sort of on the other side of the question. Why don't we just start? I mean, I'm not gonna say we should, we've been through a lot of flu seasons in the history of the Planning Commission. I'm ready to come back anytime. I don't need to wait till the new year. That would be my vote. Okay. Yeah, I apologize. I didn't respond to that email. I'm one that didn't respond, but I'm glad we're talking about today. I'm personally just indifferent, whatever the rest of the commission would like to do, I'm happy to be on board for. Well, I guess if this is true confessions of who didn't respond to Jocelyn who did, I'll have to say I also did not respond to Jocelyn, but I also feel similarly to Tim. I'm happy to do whatever. Okay. Judy. He's laughed. He didn't respond. Who's the last one? Okay. Well, there's a possibility that I will not be with the commission after the vote, after the election. So I will just go along with whatever you all want. And that's of course a possibility for me as well. So it's like, I'm the one obviously, I'm the one who responded. So I'm obviously the one who responded and that's my reasoning to all confess. Thanks guys. We're gonna make us look bad. So the reason I had advocated for waiting until January 1st is that the governor and the legislative body actually passed changes to the Brown Act effective January 1st. And so our body is likely to have to meet in person January 1st anyway, because of the changes in regulations around remote meeting. And so to me, it made sense to work, to align when we're gonna have to go back. And I felt we've been rather successful in meeting remotely and that since we're having, for me, meeting remotely has been effective in terms of balancing my other work and this work, especially since we don't always know how long these meetings are gonna go. So it allows me to kind of go back to my other work when we have it. So that's why I was advocating for, because for the rest of it, from now to December is a pretty busy time. And so the flexibility of being able to not have to travel to 701 in order to do the planning commission is really, I think he just balance the time that I give to the planning commission versus the time I need to do the rest of my work. So I was just advocating for aligning when we go back to in-person to when we're basically gonna have to go back to in-person based on some of the changes that the governor had signed into law. So that's why I was advocating. It's only a couple more months. Let's just wait until the end of the year to go back. Well, I was about to respond or I said, I just do it sooner, but it isn't that big a deal. We can wait till the beginning of the year, but I wanna make sure we actually go back. And while it may be convenient for us, I know for sure there's a lot of people who don't come to public hearings because they're uneasy about Zoom. And I know Zoom is a fact of life for anyone who, most people, but a lot of people, it's not. They're not that comfortable, especially speaking up on a remote screen at a public meeting. So if we're gonna be required to go back, that's fine, but I wanna make sure we actually do it. And I would like to, you know, I have never really met you face to face, for example, and I've never met Tim, I don't believe. And I think that would make a big difference. So we're all committed to going back on the first, let's make sure we're really going. Yeah, so the governor recently passed maybe two, four, four, nine, which changes like the regulations around remote meeting and says that you have to have. You can continue to do it, but you have to have a majority of the body in-person in the district meeting physically. And it has very few exceptions to when you can continue to meet remotely. And there's only three circumstances under which that's possible. And they're very strict because AB 361 is not gonna, we won't be able to continue using that as a 30 day extension anymore. And so my understanding, at least my, and Justin can probably weigh in. I don't know Justin, if you already read 24th. Well, I mean, I don't, 49 or not, but I believe that we're likely to be forced to go back in the new year. So I agree with you. We will be going back. I think it's inevitable. And so I was just aligning, but. Yeah, but I mean, is it in question? I thought we had all agreed that we would go back as soon as it was possible. I had always, from the discussion that I've seen this year was kind of up in the air about, you know, COVID and numbers spiking and that kind of stuff. And while we definitely care about getting more of the public involved, there was also a discussion around, is it the safest time to get the public all in the same room? And so we're gonna, I don't need, we don't need to have that discussion again. I'm just saying, if, if Allison feels strongly about going back in January, I would expect, I think we should agree to go back in January. That's all. Let's do that. We'll move it along. So we all know what to expect. I'd be on board with that. I think January is a good time. And so I agree with Commissioner Villalante, being a little more flexible has been helpful for me, especially going through such large topics that we've been going through. Well, that won't happen again. Right, exactly. And since we have a little bit lighter of a year sounds like to finish up, you know, for me, I think if starting on the first, be a nice clean break first of the year. That works for everyone else. I'd be happy with that too. So do we do anything else but our direction, Jocelyn, can we? No, that sounds good. We're, we're going to be testing the phone in ability. So we've talked about this before, but are we envisioned having everybody in the chambers, not half of the commission in the chambers, like the board has been doing it, but everybody in the chambers, all commissioners, and then members of the public and all staff in the, in the chambers, and then members of the public would have the option of coming in or calling in. Cause I do think that's been a very valuable option to be able to retain to the public. At ZA, I feel like we've had way better attendance at zoning administrator hearings since they've been remote versus when they were in person, absolutely a hundred percent more effective, I feel like with that phone in option. So I'd like to retain that. And then if someone, you know, is ill or COVID adverse or just, you know, trying to work and would like to make a comment but doesn't want to take half of their day off of work to come down for three minutes of public comment, they can just be on hold and then jump on their phone. And so we'll be testing that and we will be bringing ZA back to the chambers, I think before January. So we'll have a chance to perfect that system by the time you guys start in January. So it might be a good actually to stagger ZA and planning commission in case we have any issues. I don't think we will, but if we do, then we can sort those out before you really hit the pavement. And yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing everybody's face again for sure. So we'll start in January. We'll test it though and bring back ZA first and have it all squared away for you. So, so thanks. Cool. Thanks, Jocelyn. And I just, let's make sure that we always take a break. Yeah. Agreed. I need to be a little stricter on that. Appreciate that. Okay, great. Well, with that, then we can move on to agenda item 11. Do we have a county council's report today? Nothing to report. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Graham. Appreciate that. Okay, that, that's it. We did it. We got to the end of the agenda. So thank you, everyone. Great, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. See you in October. See you in October. Okay. See you later. Bye. Thank you.