 Okay. Everybody ready? Hello and welcome to the Capitola Planning Commission meeting. This meeting is open to the public with both in-person attendance at City of Capitola Council chambers at 420 Capitola Avenue and a remote attendance possible. Planning Commission and staff are attending in person and remotely via Zoom. There are several ways for the public to watch and participate. Information on how to join the meeting via Zoom and make public comment during the meeting is available on our website, cityofcapitola.org, on the meeting agenda. The public can also livestream the meeting on the city's website or on YouTube. As always, this meeting is cablecast live on Spectrum Communications, Cable TV, Channel 8, and AT&T Uverse, Channel 99, and is being recorded to be rebroadcast on the following Mondays and Fridays at 1 p.m. on Spectrum Channel 71 and Spectrum Channel 25. A recording of the meeting will also be available on the city's website after the meeting. Our technician tonight is Walter and as a reminder please turn off your cell phones during the meeting. Okay. We do roll call. Good evening, Commissioner Estee. Here. Commissioner Jensen. Here. Commissioner Westman. Here. Commissioner Will. Here. And Chair Christensen. Here. And then Pledge of Allegiance. Moving along. Item two is additions and deletions to the agenda. We have item A and item B. Of course staff received additional materials relating to tonight's agenda. We had four public comments in support of item 6A. And then for item 6B the project applicant provided an updated attachment to the staff report. And the item was updated on April 2nd and April 4th. All additional materials have been made available to commission members and members of the public and are available in the back of the room for public review. Thank you. Okay. Moving on to item 3, Oral Communications. Oral Communications allows time for members of the public to address the planning commission on any consent item on tonight's agenda or any topic within the jurisdiction of the city that is not on the public hearing section of the agenda. Members of the public may speak for up to three minutes unless otherwise specified by the chair. Individuals may not speak from, may not speak more than once during Oral Communications. All speakers must address the entire legislative body and will not be permitted to engage in dialogue. Is there any? I think you could speak directly into the microphone. We have some audio issues if it's not close to your face. Good evening planning commissioners and staff. My name is Terri Thomas. I'm a 50-year resident of Park Avenue and a former planning commissioner due to attempts to mitigate damage in Escalona Gulch caused by building on that site in past years. I'm here to lodge a formal complaint regarding the special meeting you held for two tree removal permits on March 27th instead of having them considered at this meeting. First, the application for tree trimming and removal of 16 trees that was posted along Park Avenue was changed to the removal of 22 trees on the agenda. That's not the same. Secondly, the application to remove over one third of the existing trees on the Rodriguez property, which is the center of Escalona Gulch, was not sufficiently notified to the public and should have been as this property is considered a monarch butterfly habitat by many state and local jurisdictions. It was only posted on Depot Hill. As a result, no one commented at the meeting, but I would have. I have been compelled to attend several meetings pertaining to the disturbance and potential destruction of this area should the proposed rail trail move forward, including board meetings, regional transportation commission meetings, and city meetings. I'm not willing to pay $594 for the privilege of appealing either of these approved applications. I will leave that up to you since the city misled us in one case and failed to properly notify us in the other. The issue of tree removal and wildlife habitat destruction will come up again as the rail trail debate continues. Your action was discouraging, and I wish these items were being heard tonight instead. Thank you. Hi. My name is Gordon Klapec. I'm an army vet. I serve in the Army overseas. I have a question. I don't know. I don't understand why Bay Bar has reopened back in Capitola because I know I talked to Andrew Daley and Captain Sharon Ryan about some drug trafficking that was happening here in the past. I don't understand what the law issue is here. They're breaking the law. Thank you very much for listening. God bless you all. Thank you. Anybody else? Moving on to planning commission and staff comments. Is there any? I have three items for you tonight. I'm actually going to, I've got slides on my three items because they're pretty exciting. So the first is that where the city is undergoing just launched a survey for the wharf, and we're trying to figure out, we're going to begin a long-term process of what do we want in the long term, but in the intermediate time in the next year from October of 2024 when the wharf is set to open through October of 2025, we'd like to hear from the residents on what temporary uses they'd like out on the wharf. So this slide I'm showing, we've gone viral today, and it's all over our, it's on our web page, as well as on our social media posts, and so we're encouraging the public to please take the survey. And more good news, next slide. The regional bike share goes live next week, so next Monday you're going to see bikes at all the locations you've seen throughout Capitola. There's 18 docking locations, 100 docks total, and we'll be assigned 50 bikes. So they'll become active on April 8th, and then on Tuesday there is a ribbon cutting at 10 30 a.m. You're all welcome to come see the ribbon cutting, and that will be on Cliff Drive overlooking the wharf, so in the spot where we've got bikes up there. And one of the reasons why we chose B-Cycle is they're very proactive on their customer service. They have allowed us to put their phone number, which you can send text to or call to get customer support, and they also welcome direct emails. So that is one reason they were chosen, as well as the fact that they've got docking stations, so we won't be seeing bikes everywhere. They're very orderly. So with that, that's my update on the launch that happens next week. And then last, I think we're all aware of this now, since it was, it didn't happen last time around, but the RTC is closing Highway 1 for, sorry, it should say a 24-hour closure. It's going to start this Saturday night at 7 p.m. and go through Sunday at 7 p.m. They're expecting lots of traffic, so the messaging has been stay close to home. Southbound Highway 1 will be, you'll be directed off the highway at the Bay Avenue Porter Street exit, and then if you're heading northbound on Highway 1, you'll be directed off at the Park Avenue interchange. So a lot of cars driving along Soquel Avenue or through Capitola this weekend. So I just want to bring that to everyone's attention, but not so good news. But with that, we'll commission our comments. On the survey, how long do you anticipate it'll be open for the public? So at least two weeks. Any other questions? Okay. Additional comments? Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to Consent Calendar, Item 5. All matters listed under the Consent Calendar are considered by the Planning Commission to be routine and will be enacted by one motion in the form listed below. There will be no separate discussion on these items prior to the time. The Planning Commission votes on the action unless the Planning Commission requests specific items to be discussed for a separate review. Items pulled for separate discussion will be considered in the order listed on the agenda. Item A is approval of March 27, March 27th, 2024, Special Planning Commission meeting minutes. I'd like to pull that for discussion. Okay. Can we, for Item A? Excuse me, I want B. Okay, sorry. Well, I'm okay with the minutes. Okay. Do you want to make a motion? I move with Consent Calendar, Item 5A. I'll second them. Commissioner Asti. Hi. Commissioner Jensen. Hi. Commissioner Westman. Hi. Commissioner Wolk. Hi. And Chair Christensen. Hi. Item B is the New Brighton Middle School's 620 Monterey Avenue and Monterey Avenue Park. This is for a proposed land exchange by and between the City of Capitola and the Stokell Union Elementary School District regarding a portion of the New Brighton Middle School 620 Monterey Avenue. So, shall I just ask my question or bring up my issue? I don't, I don't know that you need to go through a whole presentation. That would be fine. So, my concern, I realize that this is a city council that actually rules on this, but I, and we're asked to at least review it and give comments. And so the, my concern was specifically on the pathway. I call it Area A. If you could bring up that slide that, the overhead that shows Area A. And yeah, well, that, that's exactly the perfect slide because it shows that pathway, which is existing, which is kind of a narrow area, very enclosed. I know that the police department is always talks about, like for example, when we talked about Rispin Mansion, they made sure to lower the fence so that they have good view sites and whatnot. So, this is already there, but if we're having a new L to that Area A, then makes, makes the left hand, well, if you're coming down that, you turn right. So, that is, if there was a fence there, now of a sudden you have this long, narrow pathway that as, as Goren Kleppich points out, there's, there's crime or potential crime in Capitola, I would worry that, that if the, oh gosh, the middle school plans to fence off their area, that we would have that very narrow thing. And so, I would at least want the police to weigh in on that. And before it went to city council, just to have that brought up and maybe there's a condition that they don't put a fence there, you know, the berm there is kind of separates things. Maybe that's already been addressed and I just didn't, didn't get it. But that's my issue. We can bring those comments to city council to keep that as, and if there's a gate there that it's open and you can see. Well, I'm just, again, I'm not worried about this line of sight, but the new Area A that were, we've got, if they, if they fence that in, then you've got two pathways that are exactly like that in an, in an L configuration. And I think that might be troublesome. Yes, thank you and good evening, everyone. So that portion of the pathway A as is part of the nature of this application is currently, even though it's public access through there, it is school property. Their initial concept was to actually not have a pathway kept through there at all, and to close it entirely. That's, that's my understanding. This was a revised concept that, that bridged the two needs of trying to continue to provide community access through there, as well as meet the needs of the school as part of their, their longer range improvement plans, which you can see sort of superimposed on this aerial. I do, I have seen some of those documents though, they're, they're not fully fleshed out, at least from the ones they've had in their, their board meetings. They were proposing to get rid of that berm. And one of the key focuses of their improvements to is security for the school, for the students, as well as monitoring student behavior. That was also a component there. So I think there's a lot of mutual interest in, in addressing what you're bringing up here, because there's as much interest to probably see what, what's going on in there as there is to protect the activities inside the school boundaries. So I think we could bring this up through staff and to the city council. It seems like this is a project that we still need to take some action on tonight to either vote for it against it or, you know, officially continue it. And I'm wondering if the issue could be resolved by simply saying the school district, as far as I know, up at New Brighton Middle School only uses chain link fence. They don't have any solid wood fences. And so if, and I'm certain that they're going to want to have this area fenced, we could add a condition to our approval that that fencing only be chain link or some other type of open fencing. So the pathway is clearly visible from the school district side. Again, this is a city council action. I don't feel the necessity to put a condition on it. I just wanted to bring it up so that the city council does in fact consider that or maybe the police department says, yeah, don't worry about it. I wouldn't even want to put a condition on it. But I would want to bring it up as a as a point of interest. And with that, I would like to make a motion to approve and set item five B. I'll second. I think it's wonderful that this is finally being done because this idea has been batted around for at least 25 years. So the school district could finally have a regulation size playing field. And my vote is I'm commissioner will. All right. And share Christianson. All right. All right. Moving on. Moving on to the public hearing. Section item six. Public hearings are intended to provide an opportunity for public discussion of each item listed as a public hearing. The following procedure is we're doing a little modification to the procedure and Brian has a presentation. Yeah. Thank you. And good evening, chair Christianson and planning commissioners. Just expecting a little more interest in the item six a tonight. I just wanted to be real clear for the room. We'll do a staff presentation, followed by commission questions for staff. And then the applicant has requested a six minute presentation. Following that, the commission can ask questions of the applicant. And then we would do public comments and that would lead to commission discussion and ultimately decision or direction. Just to be clear. And then I will get into my staff presentation. So item six a is 10 98 41st Avenue. This is a multifamily 100% affordable project being proposed by mid pen housing. The entitlements associated with the project are a design permit coastal development permit. And a density bonus request under the umbrella of the density bonus request is for concessions and a reduction to parking to match the state of California's formula for density bonus projects. The subject property is zoned medium density multifamily. A proposal includes a total of 52 units and the site is just under two acres. And so other notes with this aerial photo here. It's a trapezoidal foresighted site tapering in a wider width toward the rear. And that front front edge is about 144 feet wide just to give you some perspective. A little additional background. The property was pre previously developed with capital manner skilled nursing facility that was demolished in 2022. And just at the end of last year, we received the subject application. The total project scope is a demo of the foundation, remove trees, regrade the site. And then the construction includes for buildings, new driveway, parking lot utilities, landscaping and site amenities. And the unit mix is for studio units, 21 one bedrooms, 14 two bedrooms and 13 three bedrooms. Got a site plan here. Just to walk you around on the site from an aerial perspective. The total development is a little over 60,000 square feet. Again, the one and the 52 units, we've got 70 parking spaces. Let me grab the pointer here. So this is building a this is the only two-story building with the building mix, building B, C and D and these buildings kind of lay out in an inverse L shape around these two green courtyards offer a little bit more detail on those in later slides. We've got two trash enclosures and a long term bike storage, a shelter behind Building C. And then I've got a few notes about the parking seven short term bike parking was 52 long term bike parkings in the in the shelter for EV chargers and then seven capable and 17 those are all within the 70 parking spaces that are provided here. Getting into the renderings. This is a view from 38th Avenue. So our design consultant that performed a peer review characterized this as a coastal contemporary design on the right. This is building a this is the only two-story building is located up toward the frontage at 38th Avenue and then building B is to the left. This is looking southeast from the interior of the courtyard to the left to be building D and the right is building C. Both three-story buildings and then another perspective looking from the perpendicular parking spaces along the dry vial toward the northwest and on the left is the two-story building A across the courtyard is building B. I'm getting into a little bit of the architecture and materials. The roofing style is gable roofs on the long side is primarily 12 roofs and then the gable massing breaks that run perpendicular are five and 12. This facade itself has seven massing breaks and pointing out three of them but there's a lot of horizontal articulation that's built into this and then vertical articulation is really based on a lot of material and color variation. There's three different types of board siding, batten board, lap siding and then shingle siding up in the just below the gables and then each of the buildings has its own accent colors to provide its own theme and differentiation between the four and noted down at the bottom of the sheet. So getting into landscaping there's a proposal here to to remove all the existing landscaping it's really kind of dated with the prior project and wouldn't fit any kind of an adaptation and there's really no prize specimen that was noted in the arborist report. There's 43 trees being proposed for removal 70 to be replaced and the canopy cover coverage calculation exceeds the city's minimum and all the water use calculations were well under the maximum allowable water use per SoCal Creek water district standards. Getting into some of the outdoor spaces so some of the other developed spaces associated with the landscape. I've got a few arrows here so there's three different types of pavers integrated with cast and place concrete. There's a pergola for an outdoor gaming and barbecue space and then there's a playground with the rubber play service and some veggie beds over in the the rear part of the courtyard. Okay I'm just seeing a note here that says 41st Avenue. This really should say 38. Sorry about that. All right getting into sustainability features. We already talked about the EV chargers. There are solar panels expected to be added on the roof. They're not shown on the plans but the applicant is saying that they are committed to adding those. I mentioned the little water use landscaping. The building is all-electric heating and cooling and appliances and the stormwater retention system meets a pretty high threshold. This is a tier four project so there is a substantial onsite retention system built into the stormwater. I wanted to give you a little bit of background about the density bonus. This is derived from state law dating back to the late 1970s. In the last five or six years the state has made adjustments offering developers some more powerful tools for affordable housing projects. Really the city's role is determining whether a project is eligible or a density bonus really rather than trying to enforce a zoning or development standard across the board. So there's a lot of flexibility built in with these projects in the form of concessions. This project specifically qualifies for four and content and concession again is to reduce or set aside a development standard and it's all to promote project usability and affordability. And the exchange is 55-year commitment for affordability. So specifically the four concessions requested are for building height. This is typically 30 feet in the medium density residential zone that the 40 feet noted here is the tallest building which is building C. The other three-story buildings are 37 and 38 feet tall and so also would be part of this height concession. Number two is for private open space so for multifamily units 50% of them need with the local ordinance need 48 square feet of private open space. The applicant is proposing concession with all of the robust outdoor spaces and use spaces as their amenities in lieu of the private open space. Number three is tree mitigation. So typically we're looking for a two-to-one replacement. Replacement proposed is 1.65-to-one and then parking lot landscape requirements. So parking lots with over 50 parking spaces require 20% to be landscaped and this is a fairly high bar in Capitola because the perimeter of the parking lots are not counted as part of the landscape percentage. It's only a landscaping that fits between parking spaces or drive aisles. So the subject project ends up at about 11% and so they're asking for concession for that standard. Getting into transportation and traffic specifically. This type of project being an infill project is screened out by the governor's office of planning and research. So really it's a non-factor for CEQA. Nonetheless we did take a look at the ITE modeling and found that there was 12 a.m. net increased trips versus the prior nursing facility and 6 p.m. trips which are relatively negligible numbers. Other aspects of modifications to traffic in the roadway nearby. Public Works Department is working with the applicant and find a condition of approval that calls for relocating the sidewalk with a lighted pole and lights on each side of the street. And the reason for this is primarily safety because it also raises the platform of the crosswalk about two feet. So vehicles traveling south on 38 don't always see this crosswalk and the applicant did some neighborhood outreach and did hear from nearby neighbors that they did feel that this crosswalk could be approved by raising the elevation. So it's moving to the north side of the property. I'm just going to detail CEQA. I won't read all the words here but the City Hire Due Deck to help us with the environmental and CEQA clearance. Their conclusion was that the project was eligible for an exemption, an infill exemption under 15332 and that the project was under five acres and meets the city standards other than density bonus requirements which are also exempt from this requirement. So with regard to community input we received four written comments, three letters of support, and then one letter just talking about process with a preference that the city council review a project like this. In terms of outreach that the city did with sending postcards on the left I've got a map of what we are required to do by ordinance. So this is a 300 foot perimeter which was yielded 241 recipients. We chose to extend that north to Reposa Avenue and include all residents on both sides and then south to Tranquility and include the Shangri-La estates and reasons for doing that is just potential for overflow parking and just impact the neighborhood. These are the two next spots. So about 500 feet north and south is what we did instead of 300. So with that we do have four recommended actions. So this is we're recommending approval which would require the planning commission to adopt the sequel finding, approve the density bonus request and reduce parking associated with the density bonus design permit and conditional development permit. And I did want to note that we do have city legal staff on Zoom. If we have legal questions and introducing the applicant we have the associate director from the Penn, Vanessa Diffenbaugh and the architect from Fora Design, Jessica Gosswick, and I believe they're going to have a presentation after questions for staff. So that is my presentation. Happy to take the mission questions. I have just two quick questions I think. We got the table on the affordability and in there it talks about the utility allowance and is that, how did the utilities work in a project like this? Are they included in the rent or are people going to be paying individual utilities or I just wondered how the process worked. Yeah we would probably defer that to the applicant. I'm not sure if it's a factor or if it's a real number. Okay, I can wait till they come up and I can ask them that. My other question is probably actually for them as well, so I'll wait. You have any, no questions? When you went over this, did you consider the driveway next to the mobile home park and is there any noise mitigation that would be considered there? Yeah, what I want to do is pull up one of the, so yeah this is the drive aisle and on the original proposal the landscaping here was just shrubs and ground cover and so this row of landscaping was added in residence to trying to soften that and add privacy and noise mitigation for the mobile home park. Yeah, I'm sorry, in the rest of it the green part is that a fence, a wooden fence? There's a wooden fence along this boundary. Okay, it is on there. It's also on the trail north side right? That's wooden fence except for the hedgehog stuff that they're going to put in. And I believe there's a portion of it that is elapidated missing that is to be repaired with. Just for my edification, what's the difference between an EV capable and EV ready? Yeah, so this is one that we did look into the building code to understand this better. So four EV chargers means day one. There's the actual unit installed. Capable is a dedicated circuit and a line run to an all-weather 240 volts. So if somebody had a portable unit they could plug in and use a capable unit. And then 17 ready means the circuit is dedicated and reserved at the panel. A conduit is in place but it's not live. So all the transforming transformers, they're two of them, they are sized for all of these EV stations. Correct. I'll ask the applicant. Any other questions? Moving on to public comment. If anybody has anything to say? I think with our revised layout, so tonight we'll be moving on first to the presentation by the applicant. Thank you. If the applicant wants to step up and thank the missioners. My name is Vanessa Diffenbaugh. I'm here as representative of Midpen. I'm associate director for our central coast region and I'm here with my spectacular partner, Alyssa Serrano and our architect, Spora. So first, this is our first project in the city of Capitola. We're really excited to be here and I wanted to first just thank Katie and Brian for all their work getting to this point. It has been truly herculean and we have some exciting financing opportunities for this project and so they actually made sure to get us to this meeting in the hopes that we can be competitive for some state funding. So thank you for everything you've done to get us here. I also actually wanted to thank the seller of this property. This assisted living facility used to be owned by Central Coast Alliance for Health, which is a partner of Midpen's on some of our permanent supportive housing and they found themselves unable to redevelop the site and brought it to the opportunity to us because they really wanted to see this really large parcel in the city be put to the best use for the city of Capitola. So we were able to purchase that from them at a good price and get to work on developing. So on the slides here you'll see our mission. I know that Midpen is new to the city so I just wanted to make sure that you know we're 100% permanent affordable housing developer. Our mission is to provide safe affordable housing of high quality to establish stability and opportunity in the lives of our residents and to foster diverse communities. In addition to our development work, we also have property management and services in-house so we are long-term developers and long-term owners of all of our properties or almost all of our properties and you can move to the next slide please. And though we are new to the city of Capitola, we've been in Santa Cruz County a long time. We actually opened a Watsonville office in the mid 90s and we have more than we have 14 properties currently in development as well as 14 properties currently operating and then we have four properties that are either in construction currently or in lease up. And one of those properties that's currently leasing up is right down the road on Capitola Road. You've probably seen it in unincorporated Santa Cruz County. We developed that in partnership with the entities community dental clinic and Santa Cruz community health and then we have 54 units in the back. I think that's a really good example of what I'm really proud of in our work with Midpen. We pride ourselves on being really good partners to our cities and counties and coming in to develop underutilized land in a way that best serves the community. So two other examples of our partnerships. One is Park Chris Terrace that's on Freedom Boulevard and that was a former mobile home park that was really struggling and the county came to us asked us to redevelop it. There you'll see we have 68 units of family housing and then below San Andreas was a former farm labor camp that was really struggling. The county again asked us to come in. We were able to develop 43 affordable homes for farm worker families and we're currently in the process of rehabilitating that. So we really do keep up our properties over time as well. So next slide. So before I turn it off over to our wonderful architects I did want to talk briefly about affordable housing and really what that term means. So this project will serve 52 families earning between 30 and 60 percent of AMI. So we use that term AMI a lot which doesn't really mean that much to the general public. So I did create this chart to kind of give you an example of what that actually means. So in this property we'll have 13 three-bedroom units, 14 two-bedroom units, 21 one-bedroom units for studios and you can see below there the rent ranges for each unit size based on people's income. So for example looking at the three bedrooms I did some research on the city of capitol staff incomes and the live oak unified school district incomes and just got a few examples of the kinds of people who could live in this affordable development. So one example I pulled there is a special education teacher that would be a person who's maybe in year three to five of their teacher tenure they'd be earning about $83,000 a year and assuming they were married with a single income family and had two to three children they could live in a three-bedroom unit and pay about $1,800 in rent on the lower income side if you had a landscape laborer who made only about $48,000 a year they could have a three-bedroom and pay only about $945 and just to answer your question quickly about the utility allowance so typically what happens in a community like this is that midpen the owner will pay sewer water and trash and then the resident themselves sometimes we sub meter water sometimes we don't I think that's something we still want to work out with the city but then the it's pretty complicated the formulas but the resident will basically get money back to pay for the utilities that they have to pay themselves which would typically be their electricity bills so I can get you much more information than you probably ever want to know on utility allowances if you'd like to I just have a quick question maybe it's for the architect are they going to be individually metered or is it we're actually still working on that in the design there's no requirement for them to be individually metered I think right now we're planning on having them be sub metered but we don't always in our property it really depends on what the goals are in terms of sustainability um is that something you want to answer okay can we just request that you speak into the microphone so that you're on the record sure so maybe I'll have the architect take this of me during and the utility the water questions thank you um so why don't they give their presentation then if you have more questions for me as developer I'm happy to come back hello commissioners my name is Jessica Gosswick and I'm an architect with architects fora I'm here today with Yoshihime is one of my colleagues and listening in is Sarah Vakaro our principal um at architects fora uh we are an affordable housing our primarily affordable housing architecture firm um entirely women owned and we have a portfolio of over 40 years of affordable housing in California um we our mission is to create vibrant resilient and equitable housing at all scales because we believe everyone deserves a place to call home go to the next slide um so when we were approaching this project we worked with um a broad range of stakeholders in order to establish our project goals from the beginning we worked both with our development team our consultant team the city um as well as neighbors through our community outreach to develop these goals um the first one is to provide affordable inclusive family housing that reflects and supports the capital capital community the second is to understand and really listen to who will live in this development and incorporate them into the storytelling the community engagement and the design decisions uh the third is to ensure programs resources and physical design provide equitable living opportunities the fourth is to put money where it has the most impact on health and living standards for residents um to integrate thoughtful multi-use multi-age outdoor spaces and the last is to focus on the details and make sure that we're featuring art outdoor spaces and color uh that is so prominent in the capital community next slide so building on that um some of the quirky capital details and color um we really wanted to incorporate um and pull from the surrounding context to reflect um both the historic and traditional single family bungalows that surround our site um as well as some of the more contemporary development that is coming up this is a multifamily development located around the corner on 41st um and of course to keep that iconic capitol of color so that's why each of our buildings has a different accent color and each and we have this like strong pop of orange um at the doors and last slide and so this is just kind of an overview in 3d of the massing approach that we've taken on site to the left is 38th avenue to the right is um kind of the rear of the site bordering the O'Neill property and below us is the Shangri-La development and so the dry vial kind of creates that buffer previously um the comment about noise that helps to separate us vertically or horizontally by 30 feet from the surrounding development as well as um there's a vertical grade change there of about one and a half feet that also allows separation um we start with two stories um along 38th avenue to keep things in scale and then step up to three stories deeper within the site to allow more people to live here and to create more housing um these buildings create two protected courtyards recalling the first one our front yard and the one to the right the backyard as a place for play areas for students or for children so through these massing changes our goal is to blend the massing and blend the project into the surrounding neighborhood um and that's all I have thank you thank you very much I want to speak quickly to the electrical question just as it comes up it is pretty tricky it depends um but we typically sub meter electric so that uh residents will pay that and then sometimes receive allowances from the developer but water we will likely not sub meter on this project yeah I just wanted to make certain because I did a project similar to this in another city and we ended up with this big bank suddenly of electrical meters yeah that were visible that had never shown up on any plans so if they're going to be you know individually metered I'm certain we can put some sort of condition in that it's going to be screened all of our electrical meters will be um interior so we typically have them inside our electrical room which is located in building C we can pull that up on a plan too if you're interested and I have one other very minor question on your roof plans um they all show something which I'm assuming is a skylight but it was not marked it's a roof patch I know what you're talking about so that's so that we can have access to the roof for maintenance um and it's used uh rarely but by um maintenance crews to do any roof or solar panel maintenance okay thank you thank you well we're on electrical you've got two two fairly large uh transformers on the property are they uh subterranean it's hard to tell they don't show up in the elevations but they show up in the plan view they're not subterranean so they are are they're they're above ground how high you seem to be in the pathway of one of the buildings I think the near building A I think it seems like it interferes with the pathway oh I don't think it should interfere with the pathway you need a site plan let's go to plan view on while I'm asking that while I'm searching for that the our rules would require you to have about 1200 ish feet of private space you know the 50 percent ratio 48 square feet what do you know roughly what your open common area uh square footages yes yeah so we have 26 percent of our site as open space our site is just over an acre yeah but there's a courtyard and things I would consider public usage space that that's what I'm talking about given any idea on that there too could there's a courtyard and there's kind of like a back what do you call it backyard courtyards a backyard courtyard yes so you're looking for them split up I don't know if you have any idea what total area I'm just trying to understand we're all through the 1200 square feet it looks like it's a lot more but I don't know I know it's about double but I don't have the exact area plan if you look on I need a plan a one that thought three you see those two relatively large transformers there's one right beside building C between building C and this front yard courtyard yes that looks this plan view is a big thing yeah it will be pretty tall like about four feet and transformers sometimes depending on wherever make a lot of make noise have you considered that in this layout did you put it somewhere else that transformers right outside of the electrical room and it was located like that in order to screen from noise and so that there's no unit directly next to it just a quick question on the mechanical units I got one of the responses I think you just found it back about is heat pumps are going to be on for the main facilities so is each individual unit have like just like a package unit that heat pump and so if discharge right to that side kind of like a hotel style unit yeah we'll use a standard kind of PTAC unit a package terminal air conditioning that will be at each unit and there's typically one in every studio in one bedroom and then sometimes two for the three bedrooms and two bedrooms okay and I was the commissioner that asked a question about regarding the solar so in the future plans it'd be a solar array that would be pretty much at rough level so you've done sun studies that either would have to be an apparatus or something that when we're looking at a building at 40 feet it wouldn't be something that would be elevated off that shoe no yeah I think like the response said we want we will likely use a stanchion mounted system that's a couple inches off and so it'll be in parallel to the roof plane and shouldn't go above the maximum height that we've identified additionally because of that offset that's required for OSHA and maintenance standards of being three feet away from the roof bridge at perfect thank you yep sorry oh go for it the trash the trash by this courtyard which was one of the RRM recommendations to move it why would you just combine the two trash things together on the southeast side yeah the primary reason for that was due to accessibility with the site as large as this almost two acres we have a lot of residents that are living more in the front of the site and that location is a lot more convenient to bring your trash down we find that especially in some affordable developments there I mean in Indian development there are people who have mobility impairments and it's more difficult to get to different parts of the site so just allows more accessible trash locations for everyone so um this is a great plan I think and I was really impressed how well you worked with RRM and um but I did have this one thing that kind of stuck in my craw a little bit and that's the lack of native trees and we and it's a problem with me personally because I've been on this commission long enough where I've seen a lot of redwoods chopped down and in a lot of a lot of big what we would normally call heritage trees but they weren't labeled heritage and so because of the roots were big or whatever they weren't they were allowed to be removed and so I'm wondering why you didn't want to have any trees that would be large enough to go create a canopy actually over the building height uh why there was no you know live oaks why there was no incense cedars large cypress there's a lot of california native trees that would would be great yeah so we can definitely take that back to our landscape architect and he said he could look a little bit harder um because we did get that comment earlier today so I didn't have time to bring back specific species for you for this meeting but I will say just so that you know um the reason these specific species were selected is that we have a few different criteria that we're looking at we're hoping that they're fast growing they're non-toxic they have broad canopies to provide shade they're really tolerant of the salt water because we're so close to the ocean and that they're low water as well um so it's actually pretty hard to find trees that meet all those requirements especially those screening trees you don't want trees that are going to interfere with neighboring properties you also want them to grow quick enough to actually screen and to provide some noise barrier so um our landscape architect's wonderful he's really responsive he did a ton of research to arrive at these and he did want to make sure that you saw there were a lot of native plants and shrubs it was just the tree species that aren't specifically native um but we can do some more research on that absolutely with that feedback it does seem to be like courtyard space or something that could accommodate a large tree I realize you probably want potocarpus or something along the driveway um but it seems to me there's there's room for some some native trees thank you we can take that back absolutely well you're here I just have a couple questions can you talk briefly I've heard about the services that the last document of the property provided and then what the relationship is that you have now in your library and then I had one more question after that absolutely so as I mentioned we purchased this property from the central california alliance for health and they are a managed care provider and they there was a skilled nursing facility here we decided after doing some community outreach and working with them that it really made more sense to do a family housing development here rather than senior or supportive because such great access to opportunity jobs great school great schools so we are focused on a family development here but as our purchase agreement with them we um agreed to serve 20 percent clients um low-income families that qualify for their services which are really just very low-income families that qualify for Medicaid um they're really open to who we serve and how how those low-income families are referred and one of the partnerships that we're currently pursuing but is really still very early um is we're working with uh this santa cruz county office of education to see if we can come up with a referral um preference for families that qualify as homeless under mckinney vento so those families are often uh low-income working families that are double and tripled up sometimes living in unsafe conditions and so this would allow them a preference for 20 percent of the units that are coming online at this site um and then we would provide on-site services and the school district would also provide services so um cch was really wonderful in terms of selling this to us and saying you know go build something amazing we're not going to put strings on it we'd love for you to serve low-income families and individuals and we're open to what that looks like so just a quick follow-up with the school district are you is there also preference are you looking at some workforce housing allocation numbers as a certain percentage of these to uh no we're not looking we're not looking at that right now um we are sort of looking at that in general at midpen because i know there's a desire for a lot of cities and cities and school districts and police force and fire you know to try to figure out what that workforce housing looks like in each city and we have some ideas but it's not something we're currently targeting for this particular like property and then can um sorry just another question can you talk about your interaction you had with the the neighborhood and kind of elaborate on that i know there's we have commercial you have you know mobile park and just the whole neighborhood how was that outreach done so we had one community meeting at the jade street community center that was very well attended our architects were there we had some interactive um activities to try to understand what they thought the best use of the site would be and then the only other follow-up we've had was with the shrink law um mobile estates which is right um on our southern border uh and so i've met with them both on site and on zoom maybe four or five times and their primary concern um is noise which we you know added the trees and and made some concessions there and then they're also concerned with pedestrian safety so we met with both the city and county because that's right where the city and county um line is and uh it's also you know there's a lot happening with the rail trail that's not totally determined yet so there's a lot of unknowns with the the street there and the future of it but we are definitely improving our street front frontage um as much as we can in terms of safety and then we're relocating the crosswalk to a higher elevation and adding those flashing lights which we think will add to safety what they really want though is the sidewalk extended all the way down the street and so we've passed that on to the county but I know that's a bigger conversation and if we can be part of that we're happy happy to be and I'll just add to that also um we met with O'Neill the neighbor along 41st avenue so um and they hired a local planner Charles ed to review the plans and to to be tracking this project so they've been in communication from the beginning and there's no response from them about this item for today I heard back from Charlie ed that he thought the plans looked great but nothing specific thank you we're moving on to public comment no okay thank you all so much very good questions thank you very much if you come up to speak please write your name and speak directly into the microphone good evening planning commissioners I'm Paula Bradley a capitol resident overall the project looks good I'd like the parking in the rear of the lot the applicant responded to most of the city's design recommendations but I would prefer to see more replacement trees planted and landscaping I'm glad to see both short and long-term bicycle facilities providing convenient and secure bicycle parking to ensure to encourage bicycle riding and reduced vehicle trips is essential bike theft in our county is out of control residents will need to be assured they can park their bus bicycle securely the bike storage facility would be better located if it were closer to where there will be eyes on it and not to the rear of the buildings by the trash enclosure and rear parking lot the staff report stated that it will have cameras and a lockable gate please require a condition to review that the bicycle facility's design is in accordance with best practices bike racks should also be to concurrent standards so that a bicycle can be securely locked with two points of contact and so that the bike does not tip or fall if the bike facilities are not well located or safe they will not be used please explain in more detail about the bicycle facilities will it be covered how it will be secure what type of lighting and what type of bike racks will be installed and I also brought a handout and I'll give it out and it's just an example of good bike racks and bad bike racks so it's just an example of what the bad ones don't use them please use I still see them installed on projects and I don't know why people are still using those thank you thank you good evening commissioners susan he say I'm a resident I live on 42nd avenue I want to commend you all for getting to this point I know it takes a lot of work to get a project to this hearing stage I read the staff report end to end good job staff thank you did a great job applicant lovely job I I like the plan I think it's a great reuse of the site uh we need this type of housing so much in our community if we're going to have folks working in healthcare education detail public safety whatever they need a place to live the current market rate rents and home prices are not affordable to most of gen z millennials many older folks including you know myself so I think it's it's about time we had a midpen project here in capitol I've been working with midpen in my day job at various jurisdictions for 20 years they do great work they build wonderful communities I encourage you to tour any of their local facilities if you haven't already we have uh saint stevens senior housing over in live oak another project as they mentioned just got finished in live oak uh the bianna star plaza lovely mixed youth site and so I'm really excited we're finally going to have a midpen housing project here in capitol all of our neighboring communities have had them for a number of years um actually I'm a former city of capitol a planner from about 20 years ago briefly and I worked with midpen housing at that time they did some feasibility studies for us with some grant funding and while they didn't wind up being able to acquire those sites and build those projects we do have some housing I think it's capitol of villas on 41st that they played a really important role in so I'm happy to see that they finally acquired a site here and we're going to have some housing so I encourage you to approve the project thank you thank you good evening my name is Elaine johnson I'm the executive director of housing santa Cruz county good to be here in this beautiful rainy evening as a member of the community I had the privilege of attending the community meeting at the capitol of manna project on 38th avenue I was deeply impressed by the proposed layout and more importantly the vibrant community it aims to cultivate that midpen's long-standing partnership with santa Cruz county it's exciting to see them embark on their first project in capitol I believe this is just one of many projects to come I stand before you to earnestly request the approval of entitlements for this project recognizing its potential to enrich our community and provide much needed housing opportunities for people to have a safe stable place to call home thank you thank you I am resident of the park next door and I've spoken to my neighbors and they're very concerned about the noise especially along that fence the trees are not going to mitigate they would like a cement wall and they're very concerned about the parking coming and going at night I understand the maximum occupancy is 237 that is a flood we are going to be overwhelmed the lack of provision of parking spaces will stress the entire neighborhood and they'll probably be trying to park in our park we are concerned about the light pollution to the site I'm concerned about all the the considerations they want to you know get approval for not measuring up to their standards of the plants and all that stuff they want that to be decreased I would I would like to see a 20-foot setback so this is not such a looming presence on the street I would like to see a maximum of two stories maximum 20 units this is absurd to impose this on the community I would like to see a show of hands of who here is ready to give up their car I'd also like to see a show of hands of who's ready to move into this unit this housing development I'd also like to see a show of hands who would like it to be next door to their home I don't see any hands I'm going to interject we there's not a back and forth during public comment we observe we hear and listen but there's not a back and forth oh you're welcome to say that later if you'd like but I don't think I'll see any back and forth or any anyone volunteering here so thank you for listening excuse me my name is John Van Segurn I live on Melton Street the south side of where this or the north side where this project will be going and at 40 feet that's really going to impose into the neighborhood the people on Melton the other side of the tracks it's you're going to be looking right down into the properties it's pretty overly aggressive the parking it's there's not enough parking and this is the first notice we got for this I didn't hear anything about the jade street our neighbors on our street this is the first notice that we received for this project but also our street will be so impacted more speeding cars which we already have overflow parking from your project how many spots are how many guest spots are going to be also accommodated for this besides the 70 because you can't really park in the trailer parks you can't park on 38 there's no streets there the only street to park on is going to be on Melton repose of the next street up which is Capitola permit parking our street is by default so nobody maintains our street Capitola Santa Cruz that corner is covered in potholes all the time on the street who's going to maintain the extra traffic because that is a cut through street it's going to increase a lot of traffic on our street and in the parking somebody goes to spend the night or you have parents they have kids well the kids get a little older they get a vehicle where are they going to park on our street in front of our houses capitol it gave reposa parking permits when spot fitness moved in because our neighborhood became their parking then they built that structure well that's why they got the parking permits because before that it was a mess everybody park in there um yeah how many guest spots our streets going to be really heavily impacted by this because Melton is a cut through cut through we can't get speed bumps on the street we'd like to get parking permits if this goes on but 70 spots is just it's really not enough for that um yeah and then like the privacy in the backyards along there that 40 foot it should be no more than a two-story building the ones they built on the corner of 38th and Bromer on the west side there it's a nice there was a vacant lot across from the water catchment it's a nice little project in there they're all two story up 38th used to be recycled lumber old gene owned the place loved it but you got one side you've got the storage lockers the other side it's like commercial buildings and then those are two stories there's nobody being impacted by that there this is just a little overly aggressive I think with the three story and a 40 foot high there along all those houses on Melton the trailer park um you know like the one they did over here off a nova they don't really have windows on that back side or just bathroom windows up high but that's so that the people aren't just peering down into the neighbors yards and that's what this is going to be with this so but yeah and the impact and again our street it's by default nobody maintains them thank you we do have other speakers thanks for your comments hello commissioners thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is Janine Roth I live in Santa Cruz but I have family that's in Capitola I'm also with Santa Cruz Yambi and you received a letter from us yesterday in support of this wonderful project a key point of that letter is that this one development project is really an opportunity for you to add affordable housing to our community in the last eight years in the last cycle you we only added seven such affordable homes this one project alone would add seven times that amount in the staff report you see that the project is general consistent with the general plan consistent with the zoning code it needs design review criteria it's consistent with the local coastal plan and other coastal findings I noted also that there are multiple traffic studies that showed minimal effect on traffic in this area but one of the things that I'd like to also point out that's really notable about this project and we've seen a lot of projects going up in the county of Santa Cruz is there's a really a large number of one two and three bedroom units homes midpen as you saw they anticipate 13 three bedroom homes that's fantastic for families this is designed as a family community it really shows there's a playground there's multiple communal spaces so since this is about homes for people's I'm actually gonna I had already planned but midpen did a little bit of this already but I'd already planned to just go through who some of those families might be that would be living in this place one family might be two teachers with two children and they could live in one of these homes for less than 2000 a month another family might be I did look up also the salaries a maintenance worker here for the city of Capitola they could live in the family with a rent of less than 1700 per month and yet another is a young couple the small children they might both work in hospitality or retail which is really important to the city they could live in one of the homes for less than 1300 a month your last housing element showed that the median house price the median rent price for a three bedroom unit was over three thousand dollars these families can't live in capitol otherwise so I just want to encourage you to approve this project it helps the people that work here to live here these are the teachers and the essential workers of our community so let's let's welcome them in as neighbors and please approve this project thank you thank you hi commissioners a little bit loud my name is Grace Stutzen and I fully support this project I first moved here as a housing and homelessness reporter based in Santa Cruz county and at that time a few years ago it was the most difficult housing market that I've ever experienced in my life even compared to Brooklyn Chicago and Seattle and it's only gotten worse within the last month alone I know of at least five people that have had to leave the area because they cannot find sustainable affordable housing options and so I think we really need to commend the work that organizations live in tendu to really develop additional affordable housing here in our community especially 100 percent affordable housing and see what we can do with this project I live very close to 1500 capitol road and have seen that project come into fruition over the last few years since I've lived in Santa Cruz and it has been such a boon to the community I've really enjoyed seeing people be able to come to Santa Cruz community health in Diantis and I'm even more excited to see people move into those units of housing when they become open soon it's so vital to have affordable housing options in our community as many individuals have already shared we need affordable housing for people that are working in our schools as firefighters in our cities in our counties and so I really just want to emphasize the importance of this project and really encourage you to approve it thank you thank you hello my name is Lola I'm a UCSE student I'm also involved with the UCSE student housing coalition and I want to express my support for this project I really appreciate the inclusion of secure bike parking for folks living at this property because as someone mentioned bike that is such a big issue throughout our county I think the lack of parking is actually lack of parking is actually great I'm car free there are so many people in our community who are car free by choice and choose to get around you know walking biking and transit and the location of this property this development and it's proximity to services makes it even more feasible to get around without a car so I think the amount of parking is perfect I'm really happy that midpen is moving towards more sustainable land use options and maximizing like the land use on this parcel for more housing rather than more parking I need housing for people not cars and so I really appreciate that it's really exciting that projects like this are being built throughout our county that people can actually afford that I can afford to live in this county after I graduate you know family families can live here commuters turning commuters into neighbors and those commuters who are you know needing to commute into capitol can actually afford to live here and raise their families here so I'm really excited about this project I don't think that parking is a serious issue I think this is a trend that we're seeing throughout our county projects aren't being filled with a lot of parking and I don't see it as an issue I think the young people that are moving into this county don't want to have to live with a car families want to be able to live car light in our county so this is really exciting thank you thank you my name is Keith Grenadier I also live on uh Mountain Street with my neighbor John um the first we've heard of this project at all on the joining street there sounds like a wonderful project seems like a very good design to people um but it seems to me like as local residents we're gonna need a little more time to kind of be able to communicate and all work together to try to figure out the impact as John said and you know a lot of things to take into consideration it is a large project for many of us so I just like that is there any sense of the time I guess we don't talk back and forth right okay so I'd like to suggest that I'd like to suggest more time we just got the little room those cars a couple days ago we didn't know about the j-street so that's just something I'd like to suggest I think it's real important to have time for all of us to work together and to communicate as neighbors and such so that's what I'd like to say now thank you anybody else would like to speak no hearing none I'm closing the public hearing or um and before we move on to the planning commission deliberation I'd like to offer the applicant the opportunity to respond with questions to respond to questions would you like would the applicant like to respond to any of the public comment questions yeah okay so um we're gonna bring it back to the planning commission deliberations sorry anybody have where we would like to start I'm sure um so one thing um I'd like to um just go over a couple things out so the mailing notice uh Brian uh you mentioned before was by code 300 feet is that correct 300 feet code standard yes right and um the city did 500 feet the same in a north south direction east west we stuck with the 300 feet just because of the way the streets layout would have gone across 41st which um it's not a logical end point so yeah we went north and south 500 was that in response to like the project that we've done before like the one that was a 4401 or yeah back and just generally speaking project like this we want to we want to expand the notification area particularly you know when there was a parking reduction request that we wanted to get neighbors noticed that have a street that could be potentially impacted by the and then follow up just do some comments that were made about the community meeting that was held at the jay street was that then by driven by applicant process right just the city doesn't drive that process yeah staff did not did not attend the meeting so that was an applicant trying to outreach to the community correct okay um so thank you um so sorry um a couple of questions regarding parking so on a project like this what's the requirement to have for parking if we could just highlight that and then how many parking spots are noted on this project so density bonus projects um there's a the state has a table that the applicant is proposing to follow which includes one parking space for studios in one bedrooms and one and a half or two and three bedrooms and so that wouldn't net out to 66 parking spaces and they're proposing 70 so there's a remainder of four for staff and guests all right um a comment was made about the lighting was there like rm does they do that from a review standpoint for light infrastructure and stuff like that they did look at that and staff did look at it too um so the lighting standards are 12 feet tall code standard for a lighting standard which is the pole to be clear uh the limitation is 15 feet so it's below that standard and all the lighting fixtures themselves are either shielded um or with a globe lens and they're all dark sky compliant which is is our standard right um that's all I have right now and I have a couple more thank you I actually thought I would like to commend the applicant I think it's a good design from a design standpoint um pretty good use of the land I am concerned about the noise on that mobile home park store shingle law I don't know if a cement fence would work I I don't know how this wooden fence is anyway but when trucks go in there it's going to be kind of noisy the notification thing I think we've got this is the second project where we've been hit with I'll call it insufficient notification for the public nearby I don't know what we can do about that and city follows their rules are the little green cars that John and Keith got week or so whatever the requirements two weeks before the meeting 10 days 10 days but they didn't didn't get anything before that um and the same thing happened on 44 or one Capitol road a week related process wise these affordable housing things like he just you know single them up maybe we could figure out um I I do did worry a little bit about Keith's comment or maybe John's about the height the 40 foot height but um it's it's back it's sort of set back into the project itself and I think the architects have done a pretty good job of trying to you know make sure that they there's not a lot of people that are going to see a lot of things you know when they look out their window so I I'm a design standpoint I thought that was very good landscaping I thought was excellent um night understand your comments about native trees but they're they're wiping out 27 palms or something like that which are not native so that's good I'm not I'm not sure that redwoods really belong on the flatlands on the coast I think they shouldn't um and uh the electrification is good I like that idea I hope that when you put in solar you put in storage as well and get us off the grid as much as we can I I know it's an economic issue there but good direction for us to go because we have to electrify and the bikes um actually did have a did have a question about that but we have a lot more electric bikes now so they have to be charged as well I don't know if you've accommodated that sounds like you have okay and that I think yeah those are my comments yeah we've added a lot more electric bike charging to our previous projects and we will look into it on this project someone in the in a comment also mentioned types of bike racks um and the bike barn where the long-term storage is is sized to accommodate a variety of bike racks both vertical and horizontal on the ground with ample space for things like trailers tricycles and electric bikes um and yeah intended to have electrical routing to it for potential chargers thank you um what before you do you um is there a reason why you didn't put a masonry fence between the adjoining parcel um kind of so there's as I mentioned before the one and a half site grade difference so it's um our site is one and a half feet above the site to the south of us at shinger law right now the existing fence is such that it's exactly on that line um we could look into potentially making it more robust but it starts to encroach on either property line and require some additional reinforcements and structural requirements beyond it more traditional wooden fence would that be a consideration if it was suggested might defer to mid pen it is something we could look into but it adds significant costs and the state does put some limits on how much we can spend um per unit and in total cost so we're always kind of right up against that edge and that requirement is pretty challenging for that long of a fence as well okay thank you did I just follow up on that so the fence is like a six foot fence is what's being proposed that's right and there's a grade difference of about two feet so the fence or the mobile home park side will be about eight feet high thank you just wanted to understand it yeah I believe we're proposing eight feet the whole way uh so it's going to be eight feet on your side or so so okay thank you before you go did you get a copy of this uh but I'd like a copy of that that's the bike bike lock options the good and the bad and and put into our agenda packet online tomorrow so we can provide it to tomorrow sounds good well I would like to compliment mid pen on this project I think they did an exceptional job on the design I like the fact that they start with the two-story building on 38th avenue and then step up the heights of the building and with the parking on the rear of the project it creates a nice buffer from from where the taller buildings are going to be I think the design itself will work real well for that area it certainly is going to provide a lot of nice housing opportunities for people who live and work here in Capitola I do think that when we make our motion we ought to include something in there that suggests to the city council that they look into improvements for the adjacent residential streets in this area because I do think that with the parking allowances that are going in under the new state law there is going to be some you know additional burden on the neighborhood around these kinds of projects and so I think as part of that the city has some obligation to look at streets like Milton and Raposa and see if there are things that we can do as far as improving the streets improving the parking you know I don't know if it's possible to have some diagonal parking on these streets because often the city right away is quite large you know to help alleviate some of the burden that the adjacent residential neighborhoods are going to to feel so I hope when we make a motion that that that is included in that but all in all I think that we're all working with new regulations and new laws that have only been in effect for a couple years regarding height and density of parking so that there is more there's going to be more denser taller buildings than we had been accustomed to so I think we have to make some adjustments to work with everybody on that but I think this particular project did a nice job and and how they put it together and will be a real asset for this area and the neighborhood and the entire city of Capitola so I uh yeah I'd like to address that density concern as well I mean the city council and the and the planning commission historically have said that Capitola is is full it's built out there's no room for growth it's been 10,000 people for forever but the state came along and told us needed to grow and grow considerably so we have a housing element and we have new regulations as uh as commissioner westman pointed out um and we need to embrace the fact that there is a real need for uh not just affordable housing and housing in general so it doesn't impact parking it doesn't impact traffic patterns this is something that we've been struggling with for a while now and we've approved uh I uh come what was it a project on Capitola road where all these same issues came up and uh there were there's a lot of heated arguments but basically the answer is Capitola is growing and we're going to have to grin and bear it whether we like it or not and I I actually like it because I think that the need is truly there and we're and we're just going to have to sacrifice the parking and sacrifice the the traffic I live in the village so I know all about parking problems so anyway um with regards to um putting conditions on this project I think it is such a great project I don't want to put any hard conditions on other than that they're already there um they've worked very well with the staff they work very well with our consultants um I think they'll take the bike rack comments uh with the with consideration and and and make improvements as they see fit the again the one thing I'm going to go back to is the is the trees now I realize there's some controversy whether or not redwoods really belong in Capitola and they really should be on the coast I remember having this argument with the um Ed Newman a while back and different arborists different agree but the point is is that I you know I want to be an advocate for the birds and the bugs and the and the little rodents that in fact inhabit these trees and and inhabit our riparian corridor and so called creek and and and move around or new around Capitola so I think native trees I wouldn't want to be specific but there uh you know I looked at the just google native trees for Santa Cruz county or northern California and you don't see any of those trees um in this um in this application so I would like to at least when we do form a motion to at least put a condition in there to reevaluate the landscape plan with the notion of adding more um native trees and just leave it soft conditioned and not um just an evaluation and not and it's and not a hard condition I um I would echo uh Commissioner Westman's comments I think it's a really well put together package I think it's a well appropriated development um having the the massing towards the rear and the um the approachability from the front is I think really well thought out for yards the quality of life that people will experience by living there I think has been considered and you know implemented really really well um the presentation was beautiful as well so um anybody I just have two questions before go ahead yeah um just um I guess just for some of the community members are here I know in the 4401 was that the address uh the one at Capitol Avenue yes 4401 Capitol road Capitol so um so you know came up again at that time and parking came up as an issue and I know um it was I mean uh very much um emphasized on what impact is going to be in the community and I know I think the comment is taken back or it was going to be shifted council to look at potential what the parking impacts are in neighborhoods like this and you know at the same time we heard from a community member tonight and we hear heard from any from that project about permit parking stuff um maybe you know maybe the time it's not the night to talk about that or what the process is but if you could in the future update us on where that is with council looking at that sort of thing you know because those are impacts to the neighborhood that we don't really as planning commissioners I think get to address but they're addressed at a different level and so that'd be one thing and then just overall maybe it might be good for the um the community members that are here tonight to understand what the process is with us and you know how the planning commissioners um how if we vote on a project like this night what other steps or actions can be taken after this time if there's an appeal process or whatever just so um just so everybody understands what a process like that would look like sure um first question I can give a little bit of insight on so after the the previous affordable housing development was approved at 4401 capitol road the many conversations have occurred with our public works director on the need to list those avenues for capital improvement projects in the future to really think about redesigning those streets and the possibility of adding more parking spaces whether it be diagonal so that is definitely on her radar and every year you update your capital improvement plan that's a five-year plan so I'll bring this up as well as at this location um the second question was about the appeal process so if the planning commission were to approve this tonight um or continue it um but if it were approved tonight it it initiates the appeal process and I don't want to get this wrong but I believe it's a 10 day appeal process and I think it's 10 calendar days not 10 business days and if the 10th day were to fall on a sunday it would be extended to Monday or if Monday was a holiday it would be extended to the Tuesday when city hall is open so it's a 10 day appeal process um and that would have to be submitted to our city clerk I think I think it's important to everybody know what avenues and then if it were appealed the next the city council would review the project all right thanks for explaining that just so I'm curious how you would put a motion together involving streets and I do think it's important um because there's the recommendation actually has four parts if someone could actually read the recommendation in there and then any amendments to it because um just legally looking for that are you talking about the could you pull up the slide right my we'll pull up the slide so that you have it so I will make a instead of I'll make a motion um to approve the project on 38th avenue with the uh finding that the project exempt is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act pursuant to CEQA guideline section 15332 uh as an infill development in that we approve the applicants request for a density bonus concessions and reduced parking under state density bonus law based on the findings and analysis included in the staff report and subject to the included conditions of approval uh approved the design permit pursuant to the findings and analysis included in the staff report and subject to the included conditions of approval and approved the coastal development permit pursuant to the findings and analysis included in the staff report and subject to the included conditions of approval uh that are in the staff report and with the added conditions that the applicant investigate whether or not it's feasible to put in a concrete wall between this project and the mobile home park and see if that could be fitted into their project and also investigate the landscaping plan to see if it's possible to include more native trees in that site and that the staff be directed to send a communication to the city council saying that the planning commission feels it's important for the streets surrounding this project including Milton Avenue be considered for public works capital project improvements that could help relieve some of the additional parking burdens and that's my motion well said yeah I second the motion and the second here since we're giving staff the process of portable housing applications that the applicant be advised to engage the public more in their design process I don't think that applies to this particular application I think maybe at the end of our meeting when we give commission comments we could direct staff to do that at that point as the motion that's my I agree I don't accept that friendly emotion friendly amendment that's why okay so I think we have a motion and a second commissioner rusty commissioner jensen hi commissioner westman hi commissioner well hi and chair christensen and approved thank you very much um moving on to item 6b is 21 75 41st avenue suite a it's for conditional use permit and a master sign program to transfer the location of the existing retail cannabis establishment the hook from the current 41 70 gross road location to the 21 75 41st avenue suite a fleet um where we've moved on thank you okay thank you uh commissioners I've got a brief slideshow here for this project so 21 75 41st avenue I've got this brick I guess you could call it a horseshoe shaped building dating to 1962 traditionally had three tenant units framed up by the the three arches and in 2002 there was a tenant improvement to have a new unit within there and so there has never been a tenant in this unit and so the proposed tenant to relocate is the hook which is located 521 feet away on gross road the hook is a retail cannabis business right in one second apologize could you guys please take the conversation outside thank you thank you bye sorry apologies for interrupting so they have an existing retail cannabis license and so this is to relocate the code requires that they have a new c up issued and a referral from the police chief and then they have to have the state update their location with their licensing just in review of the application planning did meet with the police and they did not have raised any any issues with this relocation in fact their feedback was that this this location is a little bit simpler to patrol just being out on it more primary thoroughfare so I did mention that this was created in 2022 it's 923 square feet interior the existing signage on the building dates back to the 1960s and its original motif the center unit has a newer sign but the the two flank the liquor sign and the laundry sign are are dating from the 1960s so those signs center on the three arches and horizontally and then vertically below the the parapet and above the arch the that existing signage just by the code standards of the regional commercial code and sign allowances far exceed what is in the current standard as a 50 foot square foot cap and then the existing signage it with my final bullet here I'm just trying to make a note that the linear footage of this building is about 260 feet and the existing signage is 166 so relative to the scale the signage doesn't really look out of place but relatively the cap it's far exceeding so the solution that we worked with the applicant on was to present a master sign program properties with four or more tenant units are eligible to do a master sign program and it's typically about creating a theme or some overall offset or to the property in this case we looked at what would another wall sign look like and it would really disrupt the symmetry and so we focused on this applicant having a window sign and being the only tenant to have a monument sign and what you found in the in the packet updated on Tuesday the applicant has made another revision which is on on the desk in front of you so I'm going to go over a little bit of that now and the linear footage of the the tenant's base is 27 feet and so they've centered their two signs on maintaining that maximum they're proposing now tonight a modification to the size and that's a that would be to the monument sign it's a circular sign and it has a tree that sticks out a little bit from the edge so they draw a box of five feet by five feet around that which is a little bit smaller than what you saw on Tuesday they're looking to center this in the landscape island that's in the photo on the lower right and they're also looking to have it five feet behind and have a total height measured from the sidewalk maximum of eight feet so we don't measure where it's actually sitting we measure from the lowest surface nearby which is the sidewalk and that matches what the code would require at this location but it would be built into the master sign program if the commission so approves it as presented for the window sign what you saw on Tuesday was to have a nine square foot sign but with rounding out or reducing the the size to fit in a square of the monument they're they're only left with two square feet so they'd reduce that sign size as well to two square feet and then they're proposing 10 to 12 these are bunch grass plants to add some green life to the planner that's at the front and then hold a picture this is a drought tolerant type of bunch grass that they're presenting this evening and this was our our master sign program that was presented in the staff report and so we would if the commission is amenable to the applicant's modifications we would update this to reflect those and the last item I want to discuss is so during the review staff did an inspection of the property with the building official to look at egress and there isn't potentially a need to address the means of egress right now there's only one door operating it goes into the building from the store front record plans of records show that there was an internal communicating door to the salon unit that's been walled off by the salon tenant so there was a condition that we had in the packet which is the top one here the business owner shall apply for a building permit to install relocate the existing secondary means of egress prior to opening for business since the time that staff went out and did the inspection we've been communicating with the applicant and their architect they would like they would like us to change the language to the tenant space egress and access will be evaluated by the building official determine if or what modifications are necessary and really this is just an we may end up in the same place with the same solution but it's it's just to say they may not need to create a whole other door it may end up being a double door it may be reversing of a hinge for the way that the door swings so there could be several options and so I think the applicant was a little bit sensitive to the top condition being a little bit more definitive as what to what the solution was so I think we'll likely end up at the same place but there may be multiple ways to solve the issue and then just to give you a graphic so that this is the tenant space 923 square feet this is a double acting hinge door the strike side is on the right hand side there may when I mentioned flipping the hinge if this door was swung all the way open it would potentially block the means of egress so flipping a hinge or adding a second door or adding a door here or working with the salon this is the communicating door to reopen this those are all potentially possibilities for providing this solution if they did have to modify the storefront I did had a discussion with the building official about the style of the storefront and whether that type of product could be modified and the his conclusion was it's a pretty typical product and there should be able to match the mullion and find a product that would be modular enough to fit into the to the space so we're really anticipating a design impact to the whatever the solution is to this modification of the storefront so with all of that we we for as far as the use is concerned we're recommending approval we want to get commission feedback certainly on this on the master sign program and we are okay with the modified condition as the applicant would like with all the flexibility that they can get with solving the egress issue and I believe the applicant is here and may want to introduce himself is the new picture to scale the other one was not it's either they're all probably not I can't are they close any of them are really to scale I did want to inform the planning commission tonight so we have you have a kind of two applications in front of you one to relocate a conditional use permit the other for the sign and with the last minute addition of materials if the planning commission wanted to you could take two motions tonight one on the relocation of the business and a second on the sign if if necessary was just a question was there any feedback from the community regarding issues with the relocation that we heard we had no public comment thank you hello my name is Kyle Jerquino I'm one of the founders and co-owners of the outlet I'd first like to say I'm greatly appreciative to be able to be standing before you and say that we've been able to be in business in the city of capitol since 2020 it's been a great privilege and we look forward to the opportunity to move locations to a more visible and hopefully successful location that will have less opportunity for crime as well I also would like to thank not only police department in capitol but also city staff for the work that you guys have done and Brian to get us to this point I appreciate your recommendations for approval and would be happy to answer any questions that you guys have ma'am thank you do you have any questions for that I have some comments for later when we have our discussion thank you very much are we following the past the other one yet the other public hearing okay thank you I was trying to reference his list and then okay anyway so opening up for public hearing do we have anybody on zoom do we have any public comment so we don't currently accept zoom public comments thank you um we do have participants on zoom but no public comments okay thank you so hearing none um we're going to close the public hearing and bring it to deliberation well I would like to start at first like to say I have absolutely no difficulty with the use and the use permit for them to move to this application on 41st avenue I do have strong concerns about their sign application and um my concerns start with the facts that you know we're we're reviewing this under the master sign permit and if you go back and you read what the master sign permit is uh there is to create a you know common theme among the signs that are going to be in a particular shopping center and set up criteria so that when those businesses change staff can approve the new signs without it coming back to the planning commission and in this case um you know I don't see any common theme being developed in this master sign program and in fact I see the sign that's being proposed being in violation of our ordinance for monument signs that they can only be eight feet tall because when you look out and that's measured from the sidewalk when you look at you know a five foot sign and now I think they're proposing it to be 18 inches off and then it's going up in the planner which I will confess I did not go I went out and looked at but didn't measure because I didn't have it but it's at least two feet tall the whole signage uh you know it's going to be over the eight feet that we typically allow for a monument sign for you know the major shopping centers and so um I uh you know I may be on my own but for me there's there's no way I can approve one of the largest signs to go on 41st avenue for a 926 square foot business that's you know going into one of the existing shopping centers I just think this is bad planning I think it's a bad use of our ordinance and um while I would like to see this business be successful I'm more than willing to you know consider a good sign to go in there that's going to help them out as you know well is conformed to what the city's regulations are I don't think we have it we're supposed to have a landscape plan for this area where the sign uh is going in the ordinance requires that um and so I don't think what the information I got tonight and uh what's going on with the sign that I would be prepared to approve the sign tonight but I don't think that should impact them going forward with their use permit and um they have work to do on the building itself and I would like to see uh staff be given the opportunity to you know work with the applicant and come back with an appropriate sign packet for us to consider oh can we ask staff up to comment on that because um you know commissioner westman pointed out that this is not to not to code um do you defer or have a difference with that the numbers if you add five feet and you add the 18 inches and then you add the height of the thing it's over eight feet tall so the the planner is two feet tall and the it really would depend on the post height so I think as represented in the graphic it looks like the post might be a couple of feet tall and then if you had a five foot tall sign on top of that and the new thing we got he said 18 inches okay it was 24 and they lowered it to 18 it was 12 then it would be compliant two feet plus five plus a foot uh right I don't think that um well first of all I'm not certain that it's compliant under the master's if this is the appropriate use of a master sign program because uh what's the theme of the project what's the theme for the other signs I mean we don't have any of that information so I would just like a little more time for staff to be able to work with the applicant and come up with a plan I'm not sure what so let me just pull the string on that I'm not sure what what more they would do so uh I mean are you suggesting that it's not in the theme that should be some brick monument thing because it's a brick building or it should be a brick monument thing I'm uh for me um I think if we're going to put up one of the what's going to be one of the largest signs on 41st avenue okay um that we need to make certain that this sign conforms to our regulations that we have complete and accurate information to make our decision on the ordinance talks about you know that master sign plan being written out that there be an actual landscaping plan for where this sign is going to go we don't we don't have any of that I think we do didn't isn't this if did you go out and look at that planter today or didn't spend I went to the site but I didn't spend much time on the planter no but it's it's basically just filled with weeds so now they've come up with these bunch grasses as their landscape plan yeah and for me that's not an adequate landscape plan maybe for you but not for me okay so your concerns are the height and a better landscape plan the height than size of the sign the landscape plan and how they're going to integrate this into the theme with the other signs that are going to go on the building when new signs are going to go up there so so that's I don't understand that part either so they already he already talked about there's three existing signs for the additional you know supposedly originally three businesses so if there's going to be a fourth business if they're going to have any signage they're they're going to have to disrupt the that theme or come up with something like this which is a monument sign so that's the that's the thing this one isn't acceptable to me it I'm certain it is to you I'm just trying to understand what your what your issues are okay um my comment I like to echo what I heard from Commissioner Westman just regarding having a plan I guess more to scale laid out you don't even see the whole entire landscape area and have that laid out and I also have just concerns with just the timing of it coming in right before I did go out to the site and look at it and then we get an updated thing and just timing so I'd like to see it more in depth and looking at the condition of it you know is there landscape irrigation there not that we impose on that but how's that going to be maintained and then my only concern would be with a sign like this looking at that just a condition I would also want to look at and make sure that there was going to be any landscape uh lighting put in that just accidentally points up at the sign and there's a lit up sign at the same time so those are my comments around the sign I don't have a problem with the relocation and I would be in favor of that for discussion so I'm a little confused on that so we do relocation separate from the sign thing yes we can take two separate motions tonight that's the egress thing come in sign thing the relocation all right so I would make a motion to prove the application for relocation to this area and then it's the condition that they've worked with building the property rest rest in a second on a on the first part of the change of use right can we do can we finalize that one before moving okay so the motion just for the record is to prove the relocation and direct staff to work with the project applicant on the signage on the ingress and on the ingress and egress we're going to take two separate motions one on the relocation of the conditional use permit the second on the sign okay commissioner esti commissioner jensen hi vishner westman hi commissioner wilk hi and chair christensen hi okay so for the second part the signage do you have anything so I make a motion that we continue the signage application to our next meeting to give the applicant time to work with the staff and come back with a monument sign and plans that are to scale include the landscaping requirement and show the actual size and how the site where the sign is going to be located actual plans actual plans that would be discussion on that yes I have something out of so I I just would like to give them as much direction as we can so are we okay with actual design of the sign the material the sign itself steel painted is that is I going to come back as something we're going to have a debate on or are or are the issues just give us more information on the landscape plan and the things we just discussed well I can't tell you how I'm going to vote on it because that's not legal I will say that you know I I'm not opposed to having a metal sign I'm not too opposed to you know having something similar to what we've seen I want to see it in its whole context is there a second I was is there any way to work with the building owner to enhance the overall landscape just I mean haven't yet come up if you want to but just my overall concern is looking at this building I've looked at it my entire life there is zero screening like no trees no canopy it's just this I mean I used to do laundry there when I was a teenager and it was baked in the sun constantly and it just has no curb appeal and I mean not that that's necessarily your responsibility but it's okay thank you we have actually talked with with the owner of the property and trying to do a few things when it comes to the trash enclosure and what that that area is as well as that's on the other side of that that hedge the planter box we brought up numerous times that we need to have some kind of landscaping done and if that meant that I need to bring a weed eater and do it myself but it's something needed to happen because it it looks not inviting in any way shape or form yeah so yeah we are 100 agreement and trying to work with the current owner to make some changes yeah I mean I would love to be able to condition this to say that we need to introduce a certain number of trees like to match the general cityscape along 41st Avenue my only concern or thought with that is that little that box is relative it is relatively small yeah tree in there I mean I'm not currently studying botany but I have degree in botany from UC Santa Cruz and I can tell you most of those trees probably wouldn't have the ability to get their roots sufficiently into the ground to survive so there could be some smaller ones that are more shrub or bushes that are larger than the current the current ones that we were proposing but we were trying to keep the current landscaping proposal something smaller that wasn't walk any view to the building or into the parking lot I think I think more what I'm like the neighboring building the men's warehouse building just having those those big broadleaf trees that create shade screening but not obstruction they're not just you know blocking the whole building it's just complimenting and then maybe some flowering plants or just something besides box hedges but I don't know exactly how to incorporate that within the condition and then how to incorporate the build obligate the building on her but I think just providing direction tonight that that's what you'd like it to come back with would if we're continuing the application you don't have to place conditions okay yeah then okay all right we do we'll call for commissioner sd commissioner jexson hi commissioner westman commissioner woke hi and chair christensen hi okay thank you does that give you pretty good guidance okay yeah thank you thanks good luck with your move okay moving on we uh to item seven for the director's report I just have one item for you I'd sent out an email earlier in the week about training opportunities and also I'm scheduling a future training with our city attorney's office for June 6th with a 5 p.m start so we could train from 5 to 6 p.m and then go into our regular meeting on that night and then also I in that email I included a couple opportunities one would be at the the california planning association conference that'll be in october or the following march I'm sorry we did just miss that but with the cal cities so I do think the the planning commissioner training I believe you've all been to that except for commissioner westman who's played that role for many years so I think probably the planning conference would be an opportunity again we would have to cycle planning commissioners through it so please respond to that email and I'll see what I what I hear back and then any additional ideas for training would be great I would just like to reiterate I think that it's really good for planning commissioners to you know attend the league of california cities in particular planning opportunities that they have because the planning commission is the only commission that's set up under state law we're really a bit different and we have different obligations than some of the other commissions we're required to act on applications that come before us um not just defer them off to the city council so we do play a little different role and I think it's good for people to understand that and understand what our obligations are as far as reviewing and making a decision on applications and they do offer a lot of uh current up to date what's happening with state law and all of that so it it is one to repeat if if you'd like but so I'll look forward to getting your feedback on that um but I did want to get some direction on June 6th if we could do a 5 p.m start for training works for me I do have one other update um Elaine Johnson was here for the prior the first application this evening and she's with housing Santa Cruz and as part of our housing element update we've committed to provide uh just doing more outreach and she and the city of capitol are going to co-host an event about how affordable housing projects are financed so we're scheduling that now and um I think it's going to be I'm not quite sure on the date yet but we're working back and forth and I'll I'll let you all know once that becomes available okay and with that I have no other updates thank you I have like five or six questions sorry um one thing um can we just talk about the process um like the timeline for people like turning in some like nuts and metals but like updating things like it's a little like I look at the reports you know and you look at the whole packing on a Friday and then there's all these updates that come in is there timeline or is that just a process that the city allows to go through and like having a sign come in or is it like a hard dead date that we say that's a stopping period so typically we would not want what occurred tonight to happen in terms of a last minute update right before a planning commission meeting with a modification so we apologize but once we do receive something like that we're obligated by law to get that to you so we can't prevent it from happening but um in working with applicants we definitely um do not suggest that they you know should come in with the last minute modification so I guess my question is and not just typically whatever goes out in the packet should be that should be it there should be no changes between that point but there's no rule on like um like this one got a couple different updates and so then I'm going back looking at the plan and really the updates just that you've got additional comments so it seems like this one I think there's like two updates right that emails that went out and then the sign tonight and so I was just trying to you guys just update every time you get any sort of communication anytime they submit additional information on their application you know geared towards their application right but you're just submitting to us the comments that you get from the public yes uh I sometimes I think we can say that you know as far as the application goes it doesn't change from the time that it came out yeah I think it's fair to say to an applicant if they submit additional materials that we haven't had time to review them and they're not in the staff's analysis because I think it's the perfect example of when an item should be continued because at a staff level we haven't had an opportunity to review it against the criteria of the code so it's really unfair to ask the Planning Commission to do so my next one we we heard again tonight um just the process of noticing um which I think you know I commend the staff for you know expanding it and like just we learn as a city you know like from the 4401 um what's the process in or how can we improve the process in noticing about like such a large project like this um overall I mean can there be something uh I mean I know like there's probably some issues with the project coming through and there might be you know some confidentiality until a project gets to a certain point but like is there something on the on the you know city's website that talks about you know potential future projects or something like that just and like that jade stream I mean I thought that was a great idea but then to hear that people in the community and you know our location something like but is there something that the city can do to on these larger projects that help um inform people oh yeah so we as a well I was just going to say the 38th avenue project was in the city's newsletter I believe that the the Chloe puts out and sends to anybody who wants to sign up anybody can you know sign up to uh get our agendas they might not want to do that but I think we should encourage people to sign up for sort of the city newsletter that comes out because that gives people notifications she has and their you know future projects the planning commission is going to talk about and I know the 38th avenue was in sort of the last newsletter or the one before that that is that is one thing that I did talk to Chloe about last week and that we will be implementing is what are the future projects on the planning commission agendas no no I I agree and I agree with your point I think that you know for bigger projects you know I think the law requires a 300 foot notice you know I think it's that staff has to take it upon themselves to you know extend that noticing to a little further out but at what at what point do you notice people because you have to do the legal notice a certain number of days before the meeting so I guess in saying this what you're asking is there's there a way to notify people before you do the notice well yeah I mean I think we have we should firstly I think we should put the burden on the apple I think these mid pen pride to do it somehow it didn't get unique I don't think the city has an obligation to do it so we we have an obligation to follow public notice which is to post it on the site 10 days before as well as send out to 300 feet but there is there is a section of code in there that says the community development director can utilize judgment and extend the notice further and that's what we did in this scenario we looked at we really thought that parking was going to be the item and just looking at where could people park in I mean we almost there's no parking on 38th avenue we almost encouraged the applicant you know in the sense of like that that property's been vacant for so long you drive by I mean they a noted I mean even a banner up like you know you know I don't you couldn't say future because it's not approved but I mean you know something to talk about the potential what this could be in the you know I just think it's just a tough position that you know like you were saying that somebody feels like they might have been gone for a certain period of time and then it's just not communicating and I think this one I think the staff did a lot of better job you know then last time I mean went to 500 feet which is great but in like commission asking the same just putting more back onto the applicant about more outreach um just don't they put a big poster with like inch letters for future development we don't do that the county does that or is it the letter size attached but it's still posted on the on the site yeah it's posted right at the front of the site and if it's like for the trees we posted down park avenue in multiple places if it's a larger site we typically it's corner you post on both sides so that's all in like a 10-day window period that's not like a month that I'm not like I thought it was 30 days is that this still the county yeah okay um and then in line with that with the tree notice issue that was brought up when it was that maybe just in this communication you know the tree notice saying my understanding was we had a certain amount of trees that were noticed for removal and then once we got the addendum that number went up is it three trees so that that was the issue that I how I understand no I think her her her issue was at the 722 Escalona the notice was done on Escalona Drive and that's proper I think it's for the city but nobody on the other side of park and nobody who would be interested in that Monarch Cove uh Escalona Gulch nobody nobody on that side knew about that and they're probably are concerned because they see that I think that's what she would say I don't think it was a location okay yeah that we and we dare we we put it by the entry the you followed the city followed the city rule yep and you know I'll say in all of my years of doing this this is an issue that I never saw anyone come up with a complete good solution for there's always someone who says I did not get the notice and you know I think that doesn't mean staff doesn't work hard we don't do hard everybody to let everyone know what's going on so they do have an opportunity to participate but I do think it's a hard problem to solve I do like when they show up and show us that they did get the notice yes that was good we've got 1296 more houses right so we've got to figure out how to tell people that's going to happen I think you're trying with all this you know like the thing with Santa Cruz that's a good idea this is going to happen actually like the fact that they made it not like smaller volume you know it's not just packing a 75 foot building you know it's a giant mass of structure there all right so sorry I have three more um you know when we look at these projects and they always get around sequence what's the overall plan or anything when the city is going to address the impact on the community like when you don't run the sequence or you weren't looking to impact on the streets police and all that stuff just asking when does that get looked at in a sense when every project is example from looking at it one day those are all going to snowball and then this sounds very familiar from our housing element update correct but there are so many exceptions built into the state law these days that I mean um Brian made the point in his presentation tonight like vehicle miles traveled the infill development we don't even look at that because it's infill development it's next to 41st avenue however we they studied it for us to see what the impact is to the street but you could never deny the project because of that so I think the answer is there is going to be incremental changes in capitol there is going to be impacts to traffic but under the the way in which sequa has changed I don't think there's much we can do about it if we were a community such as the county and someone was proposing an affordable housing develop or any any housing development out on the edge of the county not near services in the rural area that would have a harder time passing sequa but because we are developed and we are an infill area it will see the incremental changes and I think that from the state's perspective we're hoping to get better transportation corridors and public transportation to alleviate the impacts that are associated with these but um it's there's I think it's because of our existing form that it'll be challenging to right now I'm talking like infrastructure only even just the impact on sewer right I mean and I've heard many people say oh these people are already here um and maybe that's true um and you know they're five people in a bedroom and now you're spreading them out one person in each room and so there's not a sewer impact but just infrastructure I know we're not going to resolve it tonight I just I just want to you know keep bringing it up that I mean anyone you know I know like the city council just looked at budgeting you know uh you start adding more people you know you need more police response and you know sewer impact which I know the city is not responsible for sewer but I mean I think one day it's all going to snowball into a huge impact and then basically I think well there's no money for that and so you say well you know so we're not we're not going to resolve I just wanted to make that comment um the next thing is is there um where how are we doing with permits like overall is like um just looking at the city from permit like do you see a lot of like remodels and stuff happening and a lot of uh like the economic status of capital improving from improvements and stuff like that and then or do we have a new ad use going in that you're seeing coming in I'm gonna let senior planner Relic respond to this one who's more up to date with them we we have had a kind of an uptick in activity um on at my desk it's a lot of use permit type of applications you have one new residence doesn't have an ad you and then I think through our associate planner it's got four or five residential projects that came in and maybe two ad use there I think it's like valuable information like as I go around talk to people you know like you know if you know it's the economy down and you know I talk about a lot of things like from over the hill standpoint but like it'd be nice to I don't know if there's a way that gets just overall communicated to us like you know it was a small project and we might not see it but if somebody's you know adding on it doesn't have to come through to us but just knowing how the community's changing also because all those small changes just adding on an additional room or something like that it's just an overall impact I think at the city it's just good to know how things are trending so I don't know if there's a way to share that information not in detail but I mean like maybe every once in a while in a summer or something maybe they maybe one option be to say okay could you just like give us a report on what the over over the counter rules are so we can at least see what's going on you know we can run reports out of our system on building permits is that yeah it's just or I guess the question is really um I think building permits would probably be the easiest way to gauge that because a lot of planning permits come in and sit incomplete and then you know there's there and they don't get built but uh building permits I could run reports on that monthly for you okay and then sorry and um I've asked this before um any movement on the having a discussion back to our group about the architectural review committee yes um so we're working on the the updates to the code now Ben Noble is and I'm hoping I'm I estimate that it'll probably be the June meeting because there's there was quite a few changes in there for updates but I I told him we have to have this all adopted by the end of the year so he's kind of he's working through the updates and I think based on how much how many applications we have on certain planning commission meetings and where Ben's at in the proposal um we'll be bringing that back but definitely by June I just don't know where the other commissioners stand on that issue I I'm an advocate for but that's just myself but just having um that discussion sooner than later because after this year there'll probably changes on planning commission and so I wouldn't want that to come in in November and then we're really maybe trying to work through a process and then in December there's changes and things move on and there's a whole new planning commission that has to be in the middle of it or readdressing it so that would just be from a time standpoint that's that's more of a sensitive issue to me on that one um and I know the other ones are you know in the process I do plan on uh reaching out to recent applicants that have worked in Capitola over the years to get their feedback as well I thought that would be important for just to understand from the local architects perspective with no longer having the arc and site committee but the development design review gets some feedback there so that's one thing that I would like to accomplish before we take that back to planning commission but um but I the next time we do zone and code updates the will definitely be by june so that's it sorry that's so good oh the housing element um we're continuing to work um with Merlin Geyer um and continuing to update red lions and I think we're down to about two comments that I saw an email come in again earlier today that I wasn't able to get to yet so we're close I was really hoping to have it published tomorrow but it's not looking like that will happen because by the time Layla and I get through the suggested changes it'll take um rm time to upload it into the document itself to get published but um working away on it and hopefully hopefully next week anyway you have time that you think to research that um that Portola Valley thing I think that'd be something important for us all to understand you know if how severe this is by even just if we think oh we passed it and we got it through how we're gonna have to and the city's gonna have to be keep moving forward and I think that's also a good tool for um the public to see that process and why it has to keep getting refined everything so maybe it's just some researchers or yeah I was it's very alarming to me to see that so um luckily Keptos gonna be in good shape because we've approved two significant affordable housing projects this year yeah and we're already working on our implementation of the zoning code so we're we're kind of moving right along and we're keeping our promises about public outreach and so we're checking a lot of the boxes we've got George Mel Goza who's our development service tech and that he works both in planning in building and we have a weekly meeting that we're looking at that 80 80 item list and seeing how much further we're getting so with updates I just think it's so key on how like you're saying how progressive we're being in this but also we hear on the other side from people saying you know oh you know be like you know Huntington Beach and you know and stand back I think it's a good example to talk about what happened just in Portola Valley and to say well this is why we are moving forward because looking what just happened and this isn't Huntington Beach this is you know 32 miles away from here and these are things that can happen in the use all control so some control is better than no control yep any more questions sorry Sissy that's great thank you okay all right so I think with that we're adjourned to we're adjourned to the next trailer scheduled meeting of the planning commission on May 2nd 2024 at 6 p.m thank you everyone