July 21st planning city of Santa Cruz planning commission meeting to order. And can we go ahead and have a roll call please. Commissioner Conway, not present. Commissioner Greenberg. Here. Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Maxwell. Here. Mr. City Miller. Here. Mr. Schifrin. Here. Sorry, I'm late. Chair Dawson. Here. Thank you so much. Are there any statements of disqualification for the agenda items this evening? Okay. Seeing none, we will move on. This is a portion of the meeting where members of the public can address the commission during oral communications for something that is not on the agenda item tonight, but is relevant to the planning commission. So if you are a member of the public who would like to address the commission at this time, if you're on the zoom call, please raise your hand. And again, this is for items not on the agenda tonight.  If you are on the phone, you can go ahead and raise your hand by pressing star. Star nine. I think it is. Yes. To raise your hand. So if you're on the phone, star nine, if you're in the queue on line, please just hit the raise hand function at the bottom of your screen. Looks like we have one person and this is for items not on the agenda. You will go ahead and have three minutes. Please identify yourself if you choose and you will have three minutes. Staff, can you please unmute the caller? Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Hi. My name is Tim Pavallaro. I'm a field representative for carpenters local 605. Tonight I'd like to continue a discussion on labor standards. As Santa Cruz continues to grow, we believe that it's important to keep working people in mind. It's important that the working men and women of Santa Cruz are able to build our city with dignity. It's important that as they build our businesses and homes that they turn. That they in turn can build long, healthy careers and be proud, engaged members of society. The way we can do that is by elevating construction labor standards and some of the ways we can do that include apprenticeship standards. So, you know, apprenticeship standards. Let's face it. Many children from working class families may not have the resources to go to colleges. However, apprenticeship is a proven way to train a modern construction workforce while also providing solid careers for workers in our community. That means skilled local workforce. Also local hire. Local hire reduces greenhouse gas emissions, reduces strain on already overburdened infrastructure, can reduce commuted times, which are hard on families, and puts workers to work in communities they live in. Third, healthcare requirements. Construction is a dangerous business and workers have families. So construction workers in Santa Cruz to be able to depend on good jobs with good healthcare so that they can take care of themselves and their families. I don't think anyone can really argue that the people from the people who build our homes should be able to go to the doctor. And finally, good wages. We support prevailing wage policies that guarantee good wages for the skilled workers in our community. We want workers who can frequently frequent the businesses they erect and maybe even workers who can buy the homes they built. What we want is strong, healthy communities with a proud skilled workforce. What we want is policy to elevate industry construction standards for labor and provide real work opportunities for builders in this community. Thank you for your time. And we look forward to moving forward with this discussion with the Santa Cruz planning commission in the future. Thank you. Thank you so much, Tim. We really appreciate you taking the time to come to our meeting. Thank you for your time. And the Q online staff, please, unmute yourself, please identify yourself if you choose and you have three minutes. Yeah, this is Ralph. I was just calling also to speak about the labor standards issue. I do agree that that's a really important thing that that our community needs to address. And it's something that should be paired with more important labor protections. As we're seeing with state bills like assembly bill 2011, which if passed will, will create ministerial approval in for projects in commercial zones. That bill was sponsored by the carpenters union. And includes a lot of important labor protections like prevailing wage, healthcare expenditures. And, and, and writes for, for to make sure that there isn't wage theft. So, you know, as we're trying to meet the really aggressive arena numbers that were assigned in the housing element in the sixth cycle, you know, it's going to make sense for us to, to think about more ways that we have more, more minute ministerial approval processes and, and when we have those, the, the labor standards are going to be a really important component to them. Currently, we have this awkward situation where we need more housing, but, but we're afraid of making these projects ministerial because some labor unions will, will miss out on the negotiation that comes with the, the, the EIR sequel process. So if, if we can figure out a way to protect those, those union jobs and have high trained, high paid workers as part of our, as part of our process, then, then it makes sense to move forward with, with having more ministerial approvals. Thank you. Great. Do we have, thank you for your comments. Do we have anyone else on the line that would like to speak? I'll, I'll give it a second due to the lag. Can you just confirm that you're not seeing anyone else who would like to speak on, on oral communications today? Other hands raised. Okay. Looks like we don't have anybody. So we'll go ahead and move on. And I would be open to entertaining a motion to approve the minutes of June 2nd and June 30th. If any commissioner would like to make that motion. Let's go ahead and move on to the motion. Looks like Mr. Kennedy has his hand up. The minutes of both of those dates. Okay. Looking for a second. Seconded by Mercedes Miller. Motion by Kennedy. Can we go ahead and have a roll call vote. Wait a second. I have a question. Okay. I couldn't find the minutes for June 2nd. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. On line, it says the material available June 18th. And when I pressed on that. It said material available. July 18th. And there was nothing available. So I didn't get the minutes for June 2nd. Okay. Commissioner Kennedy. I think I've got a question. Would you like to amend your motion? And if you can't, do you want to access those? Do you want to amend your motion, perhaps? And then we can push. Looks like all the commissioners weren't able to get the June 2nd. Minutes. So are you guys open to amending to just have the June 30th? And we'll ask staff to come back. Yeah, no problem. looking now for approval of the June 30th minutes. And also we have a direction for staff to come back for approval of the June 2nd and making sure that all the commissioners have it to review ahead of time. So we're looking for a roll call vote now to approve the minutes of June 30th. We have a roll call vote, please. Dean Burke. So I wasn't there, so I abstained. Kennedy. I, sometimes if you get that big PDF it has more things in it. Maxwell. Hi. C.D. Miller. Hi. Supreme. Hi. Dawson. Hi. It might be good to ask if there's any member of the public who wanted to speak on the minutes. Okay. All right, moving right along. We have an informational item and this is item number three on the agenda, the climate action plan update. Could we have a staff report please? Yes. Hello commissioners. This is Tiffany Wise West. I'm the sustainability and climate action manager for the city. I'm sorry, my video just went off for some reason. So I'm going to see if I can get that restored real quickly. That's the wrong video. There we go. All right, very good. It's a pleasure to be with you this evening.  We have been in this process which we have called Brazilian together for over a year now. We're heading into about a year and a half although the planning for this has been going on for two years. And we're really in the home stretch. So I'm going to be sharing with you a lot of details today and I'll be happy to take any questions at the end. So in terms of community-wide emissions, of course our biggest source of emissions are, I'm sorry, I just realized I'm not sharing my screen, apologies for that. Our biggest source of emissions of course is transportation. And when you look at all of these emissions sectors, you'll notice that these are the emission sources that are regulated by the state and that are included in what's called the state scoping plan. Of course, there are other greenhouse gas emissions associated with things like dietary choices and consumption and so forth. Carbon sequestration can cancel out some of those emissions, but these are just the emissions that are regulated by the state. And I will tell you in a moment why that's important. It's important to the CEQA designation for this plan and we'll get there in just a moment. In terms of our community-wide emissions projected over time, I'll ask you to look at the upper left-hand corner of this chart and you'll see the dark orange line that bumps up to 2025 and then comes back down and continues out through, this is 2045, this 331,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. The bump in the road here at 2025 is due to the procurement strategy shift that our Community Choice Aggregator Central Coast Community Energy has taken. In a nutshell, because this is kind of complex, what occurred is that in the past, before 2019, they were procuring renewable energy credits, which are allowable, which got us to claim carbon-free electricity. The better option, however, is to buy renewable energy and to not buy someone else's hydro credits. And so that's what they did in 2020. And so the accounting therefore shows this bump in the road because they couldn't go to 100% renewable energy right away, it's too expensive and it's not available. And so they will be ramping up to 100% renewable energy by 2030. So that's why you see the bump in both of these lines. The lighter orange line then is what's called our adjusted forecast for projected emissions. And that includes state legislation and the emissions reductions that will come from that, things like the renewable portfolio standard or the automobile fuel economy. So you see, we get a nice reduction in emissions from that alone. A couple of other things that I wanna mention is that when we're thinking about emissions, there's also a social cost to these emissions in terms of adverse health impacts like asthma, disasters that happen. And we've estimated that the city is already experiencing each year $25 million in adverse impacts due to climate change. And it's something to keep in mind as we're talking about this plan. The other two, one thing that I wanna point out and that we're gonna look at in more detail is the boxes in the lower left-hand corner. 2019 is our baseline year for the targets that we are recommending, which I'm gonna share with you in the next slide. And 2030 is the date that is a state for interim target of achieving a reduction from the baseline year of 2019 by 40% by 2030 greenhouse gas emissions. And that was established by SB 32. And so I will tell you the importance of that in just a moment. So as we went through this process, developing the Climate Action Plan, which I believe you all know, we're developing the Climate Action Plan which I believe you all know is out this month for review. We really took a deliberative approach in the engagement in this process. We worked with our Climate Action Task Force as the primary advisory body. We had compensated equity advisors about a dozen of them throughout the process, which was the first time the city has done that. And we conducted a lot of outreach down in the beach flats, we had an Earth Day there, and had a lot of internal staff meetings there and of course, coming in front of commissions, I believe this is my second update for the planning commission on this project. And so lots of great feedback throughout each stage of the project, to which we came to two targets. Number one, as I've already mentioned, we have recommended and brought to city council to study session and got their blessing to proceed with the 40% emissions reduction by 2030 from 1990 levels, as what's called our CEQA Qualified Target. CEQA, as I believe you all know, is a California Environmental Quality Act. In order to have a CEQA Qualified Plan, we need to have a target that aligns with a state target. That's where SB 32 comes in. We need to quantify our missions, which we've done through our 2019 inventory, and we need to monitor those emissions as we implement our plan. In order, one of the benefits of having a CEQA Qualified Plan and target is that we are developing a checklist for development, that as those development proposals come in, they need to meet the checklist items. It is one of the strongest levers that we have in the built environment to reduce emissions. And so they get a streamlined process, we get guaranteed emissions reductions from these buildings. The thing to know about this target is that we really view this as the minimum, and we know that we need to go further. And thus, we heard from our community, we heard from council, we have also brought forward an aspirational target. Now, one thing to remember about the CEQA Qualified Target is that it has to have reasonable, defensible, and implementable actions. So it was really important here that the city not overcommit and not reach those goals and then have a legal risk. So that's an important thing to keep in mind. However, we do know we need to go farther, faster, we've heard that from our community. And so we've also recommended an aspirational, voluntary target of carbon neutral by 2035. So those are the two targets, the emissions targets that we're bringing forward. So let's look at what that looks like on the graph. So again, I direct you to the left-hand side. The blue line shows the reduction targets. So you see from 2020 to 2030, and then a very steep line by 2035. And while it looks like maybe we're unloading a lot of our actions, that's not the case. These are simply the targets. And we can and will go above and beyond where possible. You also see the state carbon neutrality target of 2045. So we are actually adopting an aspirational target that's 10 years before the state target. Some of the other things that this plan addresses is the nexus between emissions reduction and a lot of co-benefits for our community. And it's gonna be really important as we get out in the community to promote this plan and to recruit folks to take action that we emphasize these things that are really important to people's lives. I've already mentioned health, the resilience piece to this, jobs, which I'm gonna share with you what we've projected on jobs, and then the environmental benefits that will come from emissions reductions. And so in the plan, if you've reviewed the plan, every action actually indicates which co-benefits come along with it. Now, one thing I wanna mention is that between this 2035 and 2045, I've already mentioned we will need to have more aggressive actions if we want to meet the 2035 carbon neutral target. But we also wanna bring into the picture the non-regulated emission sectors like carbon sequestration, which is currently not regulated by the state, climate economy, things around diet consumption and those kinds of things, and then be looking and poised to take advantage of new technology around carbon capture. So those are some things that we know we're gonna need to be doing in addition to the core aspects of the plan and the regulated sectors. How are we gonna do that? We have a variety of measures. Of course, transportation is at the top, active and public transportation as well as electric vehicles, electric buildings and renewable energy, waste, which accounts for 7% of our emissions, water efficiency and carbon sequestration. Now, even though carbon sequestration is not regulated by the state or quantified in the sequel piece of this, we have gone ahead and developed measures and actions that relate to that. And I'm not gonna read all of these, but suffice it to say that there are a number of measures across all those areas in addition to a number of measures that are specific to the city as a local government. I'm not showing those here, but they are noted in the plan. It is really important to remember what this plan can and can't do and what it's intended to do. This plan is not gonna solve all of our issues. This plan is gonna require everyone to help implement. We all are going to have a role in it. And it really focuses in on the measures that the city has the most control over the most ability to influence. And there are over 150 actions down from 254 in our 2020 plan, I might say. In terms of the jobs, we did have a green economy element to this where we analyzed the top or three major emissions reduction measures, billing electrification, active transportation and electric vehicle adoption. You see the investment we're looking at to implement this plan probably right around or over a billion dollars. That's not the city alone. That's community wide. And we're looking at about 2000 jobs that we're estimating going forward. And we've brought that into, we've been in parallel developing our existing building electrification strategy. And so this green jobs element is something that we're hearing a lot about that folks are interested in making sure that we have good jobs like some of the callers that we heard at the beginning of this meeting. And so that will continue through that project as well. So as I said, this is probably over a billion dollars but I wanna tell you that we've done quite a bit of work to understand how best to go forward with implementation and funding. We have an entire funding matrix for all of our measures with looking at the infrastructure bill investments over the next five years as well as a range of investments. We have built into our implementation plan looking at different fees or other revenue sources that could supplement. And then we've even started discussions around philanthropy utilizing novel tools like Climatize which is a local startup who crowdsources funding and makes loans for emissions reduction project investments. We have internally just finished a solicitation to bring on board some help for our grant writing administration and training. And then similarly, there's a regional climate project working group between Monterey County City of Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz County in Watsonville and San Benito County that also has brought on some regional grant writing help. I wanna say that in the Monterey Bay area we had a goal this year to bring in $10 million for climate projects. We've already hit that. There's a lot of funding out there. These resources are gonna help us capture our share of it so that we can implement our plan together with partners in the community. I'm not gonna read all of this again but suffice it to say the phase one municipal implementation plan, it's aggressive. I'm showing you here our fiscal year 23, fiscal year 24 and some projects that are kind of ongoing between fiscal year 23 and 26. There are more, we have a three year near term implementation plan and there's a lot of planning here and a lot of investment that's called for in staffing, in other studies and so forth so that we can really hit the ground running on the implementation simultaneously. Internally, we've really had a need to have some kind of tracking beyond just Excel spreadsheet. And this cap dash tool comes with our consultants providing this as part of our plan. And what's great about this is that it allows all of us as staff to be able to update progress on the plan and then it has, we can also embed this at our website so we have a public facing sustainability dashboard. And so that's something that we're working on launching around the time the plan is also adopted. We also have a community activation platform that's been adopted throughout the central coast. It's called Resilient Central Coast. Our landing page will be Resilient Santa Cruz. We really wanted something, I get a lot of calls from people in the community, hey, how do we get involved? What do I need to do? This is the platform that we're gonna really direct folks to it's simple, it's fun, it draws on competition, teaming, prizes and incentives and social engagement. And it also has a robust analytics for us to see what are people committing to? What are those emissions reductions look like? And this is what the landing page will look like. It's all customized for us. This is the Santa Cruz County page that's getting ready to launch the landing page. And these are some of the actions. So in the actions themselves, we give an indication of the cost relative to others, how easy it is to implement. And what your status is. So we're really looking forward to this ecology action as a partner throughout the central coast, who's gonna bring that social media, that recruitment piece that we oftentimes are capacity constrained to really do internally, which is great. And it's also great we're having a consistent platform throughout the Monterey Bay area. Lastly, I believe you know, as was in the agenda report, we do have the draft plan out now for review through what's called a platform called Convio. You can also download the plan by this middle button right here, if you don't like Convio. But this, we talked to a lot of other jurisdictions who said they really like Convio because folks can see what other people are saying. And it's a great way for us to crowdsource comments to then respond to. We also have hard copies at our libraries at London Nelson Community Center. And we've also been receiving comments via email, so multiple ways here to take a look at this plan. So we are really in the home stretch here. Our public review of the cap closes on the 25th. We may extend that a little bit because I think we may need to actually push out to the first meeting in September for adoption. We're still working towards late August, but it might get pushed out. And then we're gonna have a celebration event, the Sustainability Dashboard on the public activation platform will launch soon thereafter. And of course, anyone can opt into project updates for this at cityosanacruz.com forward slash climate action plan. And that's my update that I have for you. And I'm happy to take any questions that you might have at this time. And I'll stop sharing my screen. Thank you so much for that great report, bringing it back to the commissioners. Does anyone have any questions? Commissioner, Ms. CD Miller, go ahead. Yeah, thank you, Dr. West for your great presentation and all your work on this item.  Is there an investment being made into the public transit by the city of Santa Cruz? And what might that investment be and what are the jobs and is that in the report somewhere? The city does not, aside from our transportation and man management programs, goes Santa Cruz and serving on the board safe of the Metro and the RTC. To my knowledge, the city does not make investments in public transportation. However, we know, we recognize that that is an important piece to actually realizing the benefits, the emissions reduction benefits of transit oriented development, dense and filled development. So there's a lot of discussion going on about that. We did have to temper our increase in that mode share based on what the agencies and the city felt was achievable for the sequel purposes. But again, with the investment that's coming down, it truly is my feeling that, we need to turn a corner on this and find some major investment in order to make the mode shift happen more quickly. Okay, I agree. And I'm wondering would a comment along those lines be appropriate to make in the climate action plan comment page? You certainly can make a comment to that effect, yes. Okay, great. That's the only question I had. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Seedy-Miller. Thank you. Moving on to Commissioner Schifrin and then Commissioner Kennedy's on deck. Go ahead, Commissioner Schifrin. Yes, thank you. And thank you, Ms. Wojews-West, for your presentation. It goes by so fast and there's so much in it. I guess it's a little bit overwhelming knowing how to respond. And I guess one of my first question is what is the role of the Planning Commission in the adoption of the plan that looked like from the schedule that it is not coming back? This is our one and only time to provide input on the plan and we are not gonna be making a recommendation to the city council even though the plan does have land use implications. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct, Commissioner Schifrin. Well, I think that's kind of unfortunate as the city's planning advisory body that we see a plan where 69% of the emissions are from transportation and traffic. And there are some actions in the proposed plan and no mitigations in the summary that have anything to do with transportation. And yet the commission has no real role in making a recommendation to the city council on this plan. It seems like in the end, this is simply a staff-driven plan and we're being asked to, everybody can provide input but then it's just gonna go to the city council and they're just going to approve it because there's so much information, it's so overwhelming and there really isn't a way to amend it at all as far as I can see. So I just wanted to express that concern that you're here from a lot of people but none of it really makes much of a difference because none of it is being translated into some advisory body or bodies making specific recommendations even the Transportation and Public Works Commission I don't know if they're going to be able to make a recommendation on the plan at all but I'm concerned about that. I had another question about the secret. May I respond to that please? Sure, go ahead. I just wanna say that every commission received a visit near the end of the plan and everyone can provide input into the plan that will certainly be considered and potentially show up in the plan. As far as this being a staff driven plan I do have to take an objection to that. I don't think that there's ever been a planning process at the city that has had so much community engagement including our climate action task force that was intimately involved in this from developing the request for proposals from consultants two years ago through launching these platforms that I've mentioned. In terms of the transportation actions there's an entire section on transportation. Maybe you've missed it but there's certainly transportation actions in this plan. So I just wanna bring a little more clarity to what's transpired. Okay, thank you. Well, by staff driven I didn't mean that staff did everything but it's staff that's going to be making the recommendations to the council on the plan itself and devising the final plan. So that's not as I understand it going to go to another commission the advisory committee or commission that will make their recommendations on the plan or make any recommendations for revisions to the plan. So I'm sorry if I was not clear about my concern and I understand that there is a transportation section and I wanna, I think some of the proposals in the transportation action plan are good but I think I would like to suggest some greatest specificity in some of the, with some of the actions but first I wanna get a better understanding of what the secret target checklist is all about. The executive summary had a bunch of mitigations in it that were listed and that's what the staff report told us to look at. So it wasn't really clear that the expectation was that we were gonna review the entire plan and it took me a while to even find out that there was an action component and what the proposed actions were because it's really the actions that are particularly meaningful in terms of learning what the plan is gonna do. And so I wanted to ask what is the secret could you talk a little bit more about the secret target checklist and what the role of the mitigations in the executive summary play? Yes, so in the executive summary, the actions have been summed by measure. So the actions are under the measures themselves and it shows the per capita emissions reduction that is needed to get us to our sequel qualified target. So that's what the totals are. We are recommending a per capita target versus a mass emissions target because as the city grows, that allows us to account for population growth. Otherwise, which is what happened with our last plan is that we had a mass emissions target and we were unable to reach it because of population growth largely and economic growth. So that's what the total is. I believe it's around one metric ton per person in reduction and we have that quantified in mass reductions also. The sequel checklist and I will say that the sequel area and the planning pieces are a little bit outside of my area of expertise but the checklist will be, the planning department will be implementing the checklist that developers will need to submit with their projects when they're coming in with a development project and they need to show that they comply with the sequel checklist. That in turn gives us the documentation that we need to say that, okay, we are implementing this plan as we said we would and that we are on track to meet our targets, which of course on an annual basis, I will continue to do reporting and then we'll have the live dashboard that folks can check at any time. So what you're saying is that mitigations are a way to show that the plan is being met. The plan's goals are being met. Is that, am I understanding? It's part of the documentation that does enable us to understand that, yes. It's our backup and our legal defensibility. Let me just say that, okay, I think I get it but this idea of going from community wide to per capita is really a way to avoid, in other words what we're gonna have with the city's commitment to higher density and lots of growth is we're gonna have more emissions but because we're not counting them in terms of total emissions, we're just gonna be able to say, well, we're reducing per capita emissions so that we don't have to take any responsibility for the fact that by all the growth and the way we're growing and the amount of growth that's going on, that's going to really just increase the total emissions that the community is gonna be responsible for. Potentially, I mean, theoretically, our reductions could exceed any kind of growth and that is what we're trying to accomplish here is to have real meaningful reductions. But in terms of the CEQA target, it does help us in that it actually makes it so that we can achieve a legal target and still get in turn those emissions reductions from the CEQA checklist in development. Okay, I won't be dead horse on that one. In terms of, I wanna make some suggestions and some of them are just ways of making maybe more specific what's already in the action plan and some are kind of new. But I'd like to, since this is our time for input, I'd like to suggest some additional actions or mitigation measures. And one would be to require that all new larger developments make available free bus passes for residents and or employees. Require that, and this seems to be something that's proposed already, that all new larger developments provide electrical charging stations as part of their developments. I think requiring that all new non-police city cars and light trucks be electric should be considered. I think providing at least three electric charging stations at all city parking lots within the next five years should be considered. I think requiring larger new developments to offer financial incentive programs to residents and employees to purchase electric bicycles. And I think the city should fund the financial incentive program for city residents to purchase electric bicycles, maybe seeking funding from the Monterey Bay as resources district. And of course, one of the final thing is also in the list of actions which is reestablish the private rental bike program and make it county-wide. So I'll just ask that as the final plan is put together that these proposals be evaluated and considered and perhaps affect the outcome. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Schifrin. If I may- I'm sorry, I'm commissioner Schifrin, I apologize. Yeah, I think several of these or some version of them are in the plan already. And in terms of incentives, especially for electric bikes, there are several organizations that have those incentives right now. So I don't know that we're looking to reinvent the wheel but to instead really leverage and continue to support and bring more funding to those if possible. But thank you. Thank you for your comments and yeah, we'll take a look at those. Okay, thank you. Moving on to commissioner Kennedy. I know we're only advisory but it sure is a joy to sit up here, Tiffany and see you again. I'm trying to remember how many years ago I first saw you as a planning commissioner but it was before the previous plan and I remember sitting up here thinking, hey, I don't know about these numbers. And I just like to point out that including that population thing, we hit the targets for 2020, which in my book is super awesome. So thank you for all the hard work. I think we've proved that this stuff is working. So I won't go on too long. I have a couple of questions. I have three questions total. I had one about that bump in the road. I kind of understand how that happened but does that mean that we're more now carbon positive than we thought? Or is it just that switch to like net zero counting? Does that make sense? Well, the reason why is that right now the renewables content of center coast community energy's electricity is actually just a little bit more than PG&E. How are we going to 100? So what we went from in 2020 is on paper, zero carbon. Now through 2025, it looks like our emissions go up because the content of the carbon is at 40% and ramping up. And by 2030, 100%. Now I do understand that they have actually are making better progress than that and that they might hit that 100% early. So that's why there's the bump is this change from going from zero carbon to, okay, now we have renewable energy content that's not 100% yet that we have to consider. So that makes sense. So we just hit zero carbon and can't go lower whether it's a wreck from the old system or a new solar plant in Hollister or something. You just hit zero, you can't start crediting. Okay, it's so interesting. I've learned more about this stuff. And it's for me who studied it and for most of the public, it's like, what are you talking about? That's not zero carbon energy. So I think it's really important that we're getting toward real, actual projects and not this fuzzy stock trading scheme. Exactly. And it's been, you know, it's difficult to explain also, you know, people want to know why that bump. And like you said, you work in this field and you know, it's a challenge. So yeah, thank you for recognizing that. Well, thanks for clarifying that. That's good to go over once more. So I love, I mean, I'm learning a lot about the health impacts of air pollution and these kinds of things. I really like when you said there's kind of, including other things, there's 25 million of adverse impacts right now. Because it's so important to like highlight the effects that all this horrible combustion pollution is having on us today, especially our low income communities. So I know this is in the plan and to respond to questions from different, I've been to a few working group meetings and I just want to highlight again, the more we can talk to the public about asthma and living near a gas station and what that does to your kids. And you know, my kids go to Bayview, which is next to Highway 1. So I really think about that kind of stuff quite a lot. So I think that's a very salient point and we're not like adding all this cost. We're also offsetting a ton of damage that we've all been doing to ourselves with this terrible burning of combustion stuff. I think that was not a question, but more of a statement. The last one is a more complicated question. And it kind of gets to what Andy was talking about with like how does development affect these totals and how is that accounted for? Like growing population, more housing. So I come at it from a spot of like, let's do the arena round six goals, 100% affordable, 100% massive dense housing connected to transit. That's kind of my spot. And so that would all be new construction. That would all be 100% electric building, right? But we might not get there. So can you just go through once more kind of that, like how those arena projections go in and you do like, okay, 100% of that happens and 90 and 60, how do you look at that and prepare different scenarios, depending on how successful we are on doing massive development in our town in the next 10 years as required by the state? Yes, thank you for that question, Commissioner Kennedy. So population growth and the arena numbers are utilized in the projections that I showed you for emissions over time. And then the measures themselves, for example, electrification of those that come forward, I'm sorry, the existing buildings that we have need to electrify 31% of them in the residential and 24% in the commercial sector. We know that they're gonna be all electric coming forward, the new construction. We know that there will be emissions through 2030 and then pretty minimal emissions using system power. So that all factors into, and it is quantified and what is possible for us to reduce. And the development checklist then makes sure that the new developments, in addition to just all electric, there are other things around very similar, I think, in some ways to the green building program in terms of building envelope, energy efficiency and so forth. So that's how it fits together. There is a technical quantification and justification report that is also one of the appendices that shows the calculations that get us those emissions reductions, what all the assumptions are on the projections. And believe it or not, the wording in the actions really matters because what our consultants and our staff have done is looked at what has happened with other jurisdictions, where there have been lawsuits and we're choosing the strongest language that we can bring forward that is feasible. Again, you have to remember the SQL Qualified Plan needs to be feasible and implementable. And so we're trying to get that strong justification while getting those emissions reductions that we need. I hope that answers your question, but those numbers, good deal. That's great, I'll go dig in that report a bit more and that's why I've had to advisor your bodies to make the bold political statements, you know. One last comment, and this is just a comment, not a question, I was listening to a podcast with this futurist talking about carbon emissions and he was talking about the fact that we've released so much carbon already, like I'm 46 in the course of my lifetime, that he was saying, let's do reckless, crazy things as fast as possible because the cost of like doing it too slowly is 100% death, right? Like we're just done if we do it too slowly. So I'm just reflecting on how long public processes take, how many committees this has to go through. I mean, you've done a great job through a pandemic getting everyone to put here, but I just wanna say that when I hear let's wait, let's do this later, I bristle at that because I have kids and like we got to do this fast and you know, Santa Cruz we are building and planning much more in the last 10 years than like the 35 years before, but I just wanna say we need to continue that even at the planning level of taking risks, not getting sued, but otherwise like we just have to throw people money brains into this. We've been doing it, we've been crushing it, but we just have to double that in my humble opinion. So thanks again for your good work. It's super exciting. And even the just two meetings I've gone through, I've appreciated the way you've accepted it, but from everybody, thank you. Thank you Commissioner Kennedy for those comments. Okay, I just had a couple of quick comments. So regarding carbon capture, I think that the part about the unknowns and worst case scenarios weren't reflected very well. This is an emergent science and it's something I work on blue carbon in my day job and the scoping plan at the state level. And so there's a lot of discussion and a lot of scientific conversations going on around that. So I think it's really important to reflect some of the real, especially given our proximity to water sources, both the river itself, the creeks and the Monterey Bay National Sanctuary that there's a lot of debate about when you put it down there where it goes. So I think that would be important to kind of beef up that section and not depend so much on that being a real viable way. It may be, but we don't know. So I guess that's the short. And I felt like it came across a little more like this is something we can do and it'll totally work. The last thing I wanted to say and this is a little bit piggybacking on what Commissioner Nassidi Miller said is that at least in my world, this is sort of a strategic plan. It's not an action plan because it has a whole bunch of great ideas, but it doesn't really talk about how we're gonna operationalize these and especially around the transportation sector, it's gonna require funding and a real commitment to figure out how we're gonna work with our partners at the county level, state and beyond to actually get this. And I guess I'm also piggybacking on what Commissioner Schifrin said in that our purview is kind of the land use, the general plan stuff and making requirements of developers and developments around transportation is something that I think we need to really beef up in the plan and it really needs to get a lot stronger because a lot of these ideas are great but they're not just gonna happen by magic and we need to have like operationalized ways to do that. So I just wanted to make those comments. Thank you, Commissioner Dawson, Chair Dawson. Yeah, Commissioner Greenberg. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Weiswes. That was really wonderful and I appreciate all the work you've been doing and outreach and I might have missed whether or not there's any discussion of the relationship of affordability to emissions, affordable housing to emissions. Was that something that was kind of looked at specifically in terms of different levels of affordability and the ability for people, for instance, to live close to their jobs and so forth versus the impact of lack of affordability and the need for commuting on emissions? This plan did not analyze different tiers of affordability that was not part of the scope of this plan. However, you will see in staff specifically requested a measure around prioritizing affordable housing development and so that made it in, it was not an early measure that came in and so there definitely is consideration of affordable housing but it was not within the purview or scope of this to look at it in the way that you've mentioned. Now, with that said, that of course is going to require some kind of policy, right? And so I expect during the policy-making process that like other measures, there's analysis that needs to happen in order to make sure that that can occur. So that's where we're at with that but that is something that came up a lot particularly with, we did focus groups with unsheltered folks with the beach flats and it came up quite a bit. So it's definitely a piece to our plan. Thank you. I think that would be great to just use this platform also to push for and to emphasize but thank you so much for all the work on this. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you again, Dr. Weis-West and I think we will move on to the next agenda item. So we are moving on to, sorry, my agenda disappeared.  We're moving on to item number four. This is the objective development standards for multi-family and mixed use housing ordinance amendments. We're going to go ahead and normal order of events. We'll have the staff report. We'll go ahead and have any clarifying questions from the council. We'll go to public comment.  So can we please have a staff report please? Hi, good evening planning commissioners. Sarah Noisy with the planning department. So most of you were here on June 30th and remember that this item was heard originally on that date and was continued to this date. So I just have a very short presentation for you all today. Let me get that shared. Okay, can everyone see that? Great, thank you. Okay, so a little bit of background. This is the second part of the, or continuation of the second part of the objective standards process. So this project, let's recall was initiated for the city to comply with state law regarding around housing development and to also our direction from the city council includes reconciling the existing mismatch between our general plan and our zoning ordinance and with further direction to not alter the land use plan and the general plan or the land use plan that is established in our adopted 2030 general plan. So our reconciliation of those differences will be handled through changes to our zoning code and zoning maps. So the first hearing on this project for objective standards focused on site and building design standards. That was on June 2nd. And the second hearing on June 30th focused on adjustments to our existing zone districts to accommodate those standards, the creation of new mixed use zone districts, the rezoning of property into those new zones and then the adjustments, some adjustments to our permitting process. On that date on June 30th, a tie vote resulted in a continuance to the state. So the commission will resume just the hearing today and hopefully vote to pass some kind of motion today. So we have some brief comments, new content from the staff. This is summarizing the written staff report, agenda report that your commission received. So just some brief responses to the motions that were made at the last meeting. There was a proposal to require public hearings for projects that conform to all the design and development standards, but include 25 or more dwellings. And we do have share the concerns of one of the commissioners that mentioned that creating that public hearing process kind of removes any incentive that a project would have to fully conform to those development standards that we've written. So once you have to go to a public hearing, you may as well use that public hearing to full advantage and go ahead and ask for variations or ask to vary in some manner from the development standards that we've written. It also creates additional cost and increases the review time for conforming proposals. And our goal is to really take those projects that are meeting our standards and help them get through the process in as smooth a manner as possible, ensuring that they meet all of our standards along the way. The other motion that we wanted to respond to was a proposal to increase the inclusionary requirements for density bonus development projects. And this is a topic that has come up with your commission before and your commission has given a recommendation to the council that they bring that item up for discussion. So this topic often brings up the fact that the city shifted from 15% inclusionary to 20% inclusionary and we did that without a nexus study. And so as planning staff, we feel like the context around that is that it's important to understand that the overwhelming majority of projects that have come through since that change have been density bonus projects. And so there are likely multiple reasons for that. So that change from 15 to 20% coincided also with the change in the state density bonus law, making it easier to get to that 35% bonus and also to the 50% bonus. And it may be that using the density bonus process helps developers get to a level of affordability that's really feasible in our market and really like lets these projects get developed. So further increasing that inclusionary requirement on those projects, there could be a number of effects. It could escalate the density bonus applications and sort of push development to pursue 50% bonuses more often than 35% bonuses. So that's sort of one of those outcomes and there could be some benefits to the city of that happening. We could get closer to meeting various segments of our arena and that could help fill out that, meeting that goal for the city that's quite an impressive goal. The other thing that could happen though is that really could stymie development. So if raising that inclusionary requirement then brings the cost of development to a level where even with the density bonus developers really can't make it work that would be cause for concern. We would be concerned about that. And so we also have some concerns that we've as we've mentioned in the past about relating to using very low income units relative to low income units. That's those two acronyms of using their VLI and LI very low income and low income housing units. State density bonus law does include some differentiation between those two tiers to ensure that different types different depths of affordability get built and get the appropriate level of bonus that corresponds to the cost of creating those units. So we do have some concerns about getting in there and making changes without being really considerate and careful and studying the changes that that would make in incentives for developers. So we just wanna mention we're not aware of any cities we did some looking around and we're not aware of any cities that have a 30% inclusionary requirement with the exception of San Francisco and that 30% it's only applies to this one tier of their multi-tier system for affordability and that 30% is made up of a variety of income levels that goes all the way up to 130% of area median income. So it's really made up of a mix of income levels. And so we just have some concerns about moving in that direction with a blanket condition for the whole city of Santa Cruz because the other thing we know that's happening in San Francisco is that development has really been hung up. And in fact, their city council up there is getting ready to take a look at that inclusionary policy and see if that's one of the things that's holding up development in their city. So just gives us some cause to wanna move very purposefully and with a lot of good solid information into making any kind of change like that. So after tonight's meeting, assuming your commission makes a motion to recommend or not recommend this item to the city council, we will be bringing together all of the various components that go into this big objective standards project proposal. We will also be gathering in just as an FYI the cleanup item that's the next item on your agenda. Your commission is gonna hear these two items separately. When they go to city council, they're gonna be heard together. We're doing that to make sure that we don't cross up our ordinance amendments and accidentally overwrite each other. So they're gonna be combined into one item. And we still are targeting the city council hearing on the 23rd of August for a first reading. Following that, there would be a second reading assuming it passes and then we would submit to coastal and begin implementation of the program in October of this year. So my recommendation is the same as I had on the 30th a motion to recommend that the city council approve the proposed amendments to the city of Santa Cruz municipal code as presented, make required findings for the recommended re-zonings and find that the proposed ordinance and zoning map amendments are consistent with the EIR previously adopted for the 2030 general plan. And staff is available for any questions that your commission may have. Okay, thank you, Mr. Noisy. I saw commissioner, Ms. Seedy Miller first and then Mr. Schifrin, this is where we'll go ahead and take the clarifying questions for staff before we go to public comment. Go ahead and Ms. Commissioner, Ms. Seedy Miller. Thank you for that great and quick summary of the status. I have one question. When was the decision made to increase the inclusionary requirement from 15% to 20%? I believe that was like the end of 2019 and it took effect at the beginning of 2020. So like the first two months of 2020, it took effect. So it came into effect at the beginning of 2020 roughly. So if I do my math correctly, that's been about two years. Yes. Okay, thank you. Mr. Schifrin, clarifying questions. No, I think I'll wait till after public comment and then make my comments. Okay, great. We'll go ahead and open the public comment period for this agenda item, item number four with the objective development standards. This is the time for you to go ahead and raise your hand if you're on the Zoom call and if you're on a phone, you can press star nine to raise your hand now. You go ahead and identify yourself if you choose and you will have three minutes to speak. Clark, can you call on the first speaker please? I have one way to say it from Rafa. Thank you. Good evening. I just wanted to call in to support the staff recommendation for the motion to adopt the objective standards as proposed by the staff recommendation. I also wanted to expand on a couple of things. First, the inclusionary issue. I think it's really important that any inclusionary ordinance be done so carefully with a NEXA study. And one of the reasons for that is because as was mentioned, this affects the feasibility of projects and could be considered a barrier to development. It's actually something that in the housing element process HCD is going to be looking at closely and they'll want to see evidence that supports the city's conclusion that a higher inclusionary rate can not, won't stifle development. There are actually examples. South Pasadena recently was admonished for their rather high inclusionary ordinance. It's I think 20% but includes a very low, a high requirement for low income and a high requirement for very low income, which are both significant barriers in that particular market. And HCD has actually not certified South Pasadena's housing element in part because they want to see that inclusionary ordinance adjusted to a reasonable level. So that's just one example why it's important to be really careful with that. If you end up with a housing element that's not in compliance by the time of the statutory deadline, then you only have one year to do your rezoning instead of three. So there's really incentives to be conservative with the approach to having a compliant housing element. The other thing I wanted to mention was, these objective standards are supposed to be what our community has agreed on are the basic requirements for development in the city. And if the point is to encourage development to meet these standards and not seek density bonuses, then we should be making this process as efficient as possible with minimal public hearings. Minimal public hearings. Ideally, this kind of work should be ministerial. So I think that's the direction we should be going in. And if developers wanna have variances from the objective standards, they can use density bonuses, they can request zoning amendments, all those things have a more robust public process, but this stuff should just be simple. Thanks. All right, thank you. Moving on to the next caller, caller, please identify yourself if you choose and you will have three minutes. Caller 4965, you may speak. Hi, this is Candice Rown. I've spoken also participated in providing a extensive letter, which is buried at the back of 300 and something pages, just thought I'd mention that. Okay, so first of all, to Rob's comments, South Pasadena, I'm from Pasadena area. They're quite the exception. They've been blocking freeways and other amenities for development for many, many years. So I would consider them really exception to what's happening in the state. I wouldn't use that as an example. Santa Cruz has done things with development and density that no one in the country is doing with the flexible density units. So we're certainly making unusual measures even with the lack of water or water security that is still not guaranteed for our community. I also wanna point out that many people are complaining about the complexity of these objective standards, not having objective standards as Santa Rosa does for families, a third of our town is families. There's no accommodation for additional specific areas for children, for teenagers, for multi-family development. There was a letter that was not submitted in the package from Anita Webb that was quite good about problems with light pollution and glare for parking and for height of buildings and fencing and screening. I hope that gets in your packet and it is considered. I also wanna point out that although the staff report says that you cannot change density, the exception with SB 330 is allowed if there is concurrent change of the standards that applicable to other process to ensure there is no net loss of residential property. And also that law is only through January 1st, 2025. So I don't think we should be building all of our land use around a temporary and one that does allow for accommodations which has not been considered, especially considering all the development that's been happening downtown. It should be pointed out that the highest density is on Soquel primarily and water, it's about 91 parcels. That's including shoppers, buttery, York framing, Bay Photo, Walt to Lilians, all through Midtown, bike shop through Charlie Hong Kong, Rio to 24th Fitness and A through Horse Niders, Staff of Life and Shampoo to some Safeway. And it does not include oddly Whole Foods and Right Aid. So you're really taking out all the local businesses and you're not making any accommodation, you're actually taking mid to high rise buildings and putting them right up against single family homes without having that, what they call missing middle houses. This has never been addressed, but you should take out 1.0 FAR that was actually recommended in the quarter advisor committee and that has not been rolled over into these staff recommendations, which is very disappointing. I also concur that this area is not transit rich. It's not a considered transit oriented element because the factor is not transit rich arterial corridors. It was shown that the risks of the streets could not accommodate a lot of alternative transportation, including bus refuges. Thank you, your time is up. All right, thank you. Thank you for your comments. One more call for any public comment on item four, the objective standards. If you're on a Zoom call, please use the raise hand function. If you're on the phone, go ahead and hit star nine. Burke, are you seeing any additional speakers? Okay, it doesn't look like it. So we will go ahead and move ahead. So I just wanted to take a second and just bring this back to the committee for a motion and discussion on that motion. I've been studying up on Robert's rules and talking to other folks who run meetings. And that's the standard practice is we bring it back, we put a motion on the floor and then we discuss that motion. We've kind of been doing it backwards where we've had a lot of discussion and then done a motion. So I'm looking right now for a motion to put on the floor and then we'll have a robust discussion. Looks like commissioner Kennedy might want to make a motion. So commissioner Kennedy, you're on mute. I'd like to unmute and move the staff recommendation as written. I'll second. Okay, and there is a second. So now we have a motion on the floor to move the staff recommendation. And the second commissioner, Miss Edie Miller. Now let's go ahead and have a discussion about that. Commissioner Schiffern, I see your hand up. Go ahead. Well, I want to suggest the, as I did at our last meeting, amendments to the motion. I think there's a good deal that's useful in the staff recommendation. But I think there are a couple of problems and there, I think they're important problems. One of them has to do with public participation. We're a community that at least publicly prides itself on giving opportunities to the public to participate in the decisions that affect them. And unfortunately, from my perspective, the recommendations here in the interest of sort of streamlining a process is the effect is to eliminate any kind of public participation in the review of or meaningful public hearings in the review of significant development proposals. And I think that sort of philosophically underlies my concern with the staff recommendations on both when there are variations or no variations to the objective standards and then for multifamily projects where there are questions about what role the city actually has. It is true that to some extent, having a public hearing will slow down the process. On the other hand, having the public being able to give their perspective is relevant. And I think it's relevant with objective standards as well. One of the things I learned in listening to the City Council hearings on the 831 Waterspeak Project is that there can be disagreements about whether an objective standard applies or not. There can be disagreements about whether a development meets the objective standards. One was, was the development 20 feet from a 30% slope or not? And so I think that it's important that at least there be the opportunity for the public to be able to give their members of the public to be able to give their responses to the staff, the determinations about objective standards. I think it's also important that there be that kind of public oversight. I know that staff in good faith will apply the city's objective standards fairly and reasonably, but staff makes mistakes. And that's one of the reasons why there is a public process. Why are we here? All we do is respond to the staff. If there wasn't a belief that it made sense to have some kind of public oversight to the way the process happens, there'd be no reason for us to be here. It just let the staff take their recommendations to the city council, let the city council approve them. Our role, and I think the public's role in the review process is to be able to weigh in and make their recommendations, give their advice. It may be very limited what can be done. It may point out things that have been missed as I think has occurred in the past. So I do think that for larger projects and my motion last time was for 25 or over, I'm happy to, I'm willing to move it to 50 projects with 50 units or more, I think should have public hearings. The public should be able to present their perspective on those larger projects. The other issue is the inclusionary proposals to increase the inclusionary requirements for density bonus projects. And one of the things I think it's important to point out is that the density bonus law gives, and certainly in combination with the reduction in parking requirements provides an incredible or significant economic incentive to development. That the requirement for additional inclusionary units be increased as well as a way of providing an additional public benefit given our crisis in affordable housing for those units, for those families and individuals who are in the lower end of the market. And let me just say one of the concerns was that, this could cause problems in terms of very low versus low, but my sense is developers have gotten sophisticated in their understanding of the power of section eight vouchers. And section eight vouchers meet the requirement for low income housing, but most of the people who get section eight vouchers are in the very low income category. So whether it's a 35% density bonus with low income inclusionary requirement or affordability requirement or a 50% density bonus with a very low income requirement, what's gonna happen, and we saw this, I think, with the 555 French View Project or Pacific Project is that developers are going to see that the section eight vouchers are a way of getting significant additional income beyond what very low income people can pay and section eight tenants are good tenants. And I think that that is gonna end up meaning that even with a higher requirement, the developers are going to be, and owners are gonna be able to get fair market rents for those additional affordable units and for all the affordable units. So given that, what I'd like to do is make one motion at a time, to amend the motion on the floor. And the first motion would be that for the hearing body and procedures, section 2412, 185, there should be no design permit public hearings for projects proposing no variation from objective standards, only for projects with 50 units or less. A ZA hearing shall be required for 50 to 100 units and a public planning commission hearing shall be required for projects with over 100 units or more than five variations. Okay, do I have a second commissioner, Maxwell? So we have an amendment to the motion. I don't accept that friendly amendment. Yeah, so. I do not accept that friendly amendment. I understand that and we will vote on that, the amendment now. So we will have discussion of the amendment on the floor. There's not really a friendly amendment if you go to Robert's rule. So there's an amendment on the floor. We have a second open for discussion now and then we'll go ahead and take it a vote on the amendment. Your original motion is still on the floor. We're gonna be taking action just on the amendment one at a time. So we have commissioner Schifrin's amendment on the floor with a second from commissioner Maxwell. Is there any questions or comments from the commissioners before we take a vote? Okay, would anyone like commissioner Schifrin to restate his motion before we vote? Okay. Clerk, can I please have a roll call vote on commissioner Schifrin's vote regarding? Actually, can I ask a quick question before we go to the vote? Are we allowed to hear any kind of response to the change in this amendment from the planning department? Sure, you could request that absolutely. Okay, so I'm just curious if planner Noisy, do you have any thoughts on the difference between this version of the amendment and the prior one? Thank you. Sure, happy to respond to that and I may invite Lee to jump in as well. So my initial reaction is that I am sort of reacting positively to the idea of raising the number threshold. I do think that like having more projects that can get through a simpler process is gonna be better for our housing production goals. And I still just sort of have the same concerns about, we wanna encourage and support projects that fully meet our standards. If we have large blocks of lands that are zoned for hundreds of units of housing, the fact of the matter is that public hearings can allow the public to be involved. They're not great ways to get community input. And we have our whole community outreach process for exactly that reason because we know that public hearings aren't truly accessible to a lot of people. They limit the amount of time that people can talk. There's not a way for the public to ask questions during a public hearing. Like it's really a one way kind of communication that happens. So that's why the city has a community outreach policy and that policy stays in place. We're not making any changes to that. So all of these projects that reach that threshold of significance would have to have a community outreach meeting where the developer can hear from the community, the planners can hear from the community about what their concerns are. What kind of things they're interested in changing and then the staff can take those concerns and fit them within our legal purview and allowances. Adding the hearing doesn't really change the things we're allowed to regulate about a project. It doesn't really change the things that we can require of them, conditions we can put on the project. And I think our ultimate goal is to really support and encourage projects that actually meet the zoning we have and the standards we have. So that's, that would still be as a professional, my preference and my recommendation is that, we go with a process that doesn't include a public hearing. We do have anything else that you would wanna add. Thank you, Sarah and good afternoon, commissioners leave out their planning director. And I would just add, I would totally agree with you that the community meeting process, I also see as a much better forum to engage with the public about projects and policies and to really have that dialogue, which is a challenge in a public hearing setting. And so there is a real value in that. And as you said, that's, that is a part of our regular process. And the other, the only thing that I would add is that through that individuals would be able to sign up for notifications about a particular project. If revised plans came in, for example, then we let those who sign up for the email list know. And similarly, if action is taken on the project, we let those who are interested know. And there is still an opportunity, even if there is an administrative approval without a public hearing, there's still an opportunity for members of the public to appeal a project and have that public hearing. So I just wanted to point that one additional thing out. And while I've got the floor, if I could, I would just want a quick procedural issue. Thank you. You've got it, Chair Dawson. Two votes. Two votes. That's what I popped on. Yeah. If you have any questions about that, I'm happy to read the council rules that apply. I did my homework. Two votes. Thank you. Mr. Mercedes Miller. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to make a comment before the vote that, I think staff brings up some really important points here that adding a public hearing isn't really going to change anything. It's just going to slow a project down. And the community meeting is where the action is. That's where the community can really find out about projects, ask questions, and not be constricted to three minutes in a one-way conversation. So I support the staff's sense on this. I think adding more public hearings does nothing, doesn't improve our community, doesn't improve the production of housing. In fact, makes the production of housing go down. And if I remember correctly, I checked earlier today, we're still in a housing crisis. Thank you. Okay. Any more comments before we go, and I'll explain the process really quickly before we vote because we have two votes coming up before us. So a last call for any comments before we go. I do have comments. My hand is up. Okay. Go ahead, Commissioner Schiffer. First of all, I'm concerned that, I don't think it's correct to say that the public hearing process does not allow for questions. Members, I've had that number of public hearings where members of the public have asked questions and it's up to the commission to decide whether they wanna answer the questions, but questions can be answered and the members of the public can make useful comments about a particular project and how well it conforms to the zoning ordinance. As I understand the community meetings, the community meetings occur before an application is submitted. And they are useful. There's no two ways about it. They're useful for a developer to hear about people's concerns. And it's useful for people to hear about the status of a project at a particular time. That does nothing in terms of what the project ultimately is. The developer may or may not respond to the community concerns. The developer can come in with whatever project he or she wants to come in with. And then that is what gets processed by the staff. And the purpose of a public hearing is to allow for the decision makers, whether it's the ZA or the planning commission or the city council to hear what members of the public think about the and how they respond to the analysis that has been made of the project and how well it does conform to the city's general plan, how well it does conform to the objective standards. And I think there can be disagreements about that. And the idea that somehow these objective standards are so clear and sure that there's never going to be a question about any of them is misleading. And I'm not aware of any evidence that holding a public hearing has made development not happen. My sense is that it slows it down a little bit but it also allows for discussion and at times improvement in a project because of the input that is made from the public. I refuse to think that the role of the public is irrelevant or not potentially helpful. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Greenberg then commissioner Kennedy and then I'm gonna put myself after commissioner Kennedy.  Well, first of all, thank you, chair Dawson. I am wondering, first of all, we're about to vote on both of these amendments or we're going to have a discussion about one amendment vote on that one and then a discussion about the second amendment and vote on that one. Or we both back to back. Just a quick process. So what happens when there's an amendment so we're retaining the main motion and they're trying to amend that is there's two votes. We vote once to accept that amendment and then we vote again, whether to add that to the main amendment. So there's one to put it on the floor for a vote. So whether we vote on it or not. So if we vote no, then we just go back to the main motion and commissioner Schiffern only has this one motion on the table right now regarding 50 or more units and the public process for that. So when we get to that point, we'll say yes or no, if we wanna bring that for consideration to be added to the main motion, if we vote yes, then we'll have another yes or no vote to actually pass it into the main motion. Does that make sense? That does make sense, thank you. But I'm also wondering about the amendment regarding the inclusionary. Do we go through a second set of two votes for the inclusionary? And we have a second and discussion about that after this one. Okay, got it. Yes. I heard to Mr. Schiffern said he was gonna make three, potentially three motions to amend. We only have one of those on the floor and the process would be the same for all motions to amend. Okay, so I don't have to say anything about the inclusionary right now, but okay, in terms of the one having to do with the hearing process, you know, I hear what is being said about the importance of the community meeting and also the importance, I suppose, also of the ability to appeal a development proposal, which I didn't realize was the case would still be available to the public. If in fact they find that something is not conforming in a way that they consider to be appropriate with the objective standards. And so I just wanted to put that out there that that is still, you know, a process that can be used in the event that the objective standards are not agreed upon. So, thanks. Okay, Commissioner Kennedy and then I'm on deck and then we'll go to Commissioner Schiffern. Seems to me that under ministerial approval, the voluntary community meeting, maybe the only time the public has input into a larger project, but then maybe that's just my understanding of it. Okay, so I just wanna chime in in support of, especially with the change that Commissioner Schiffern made to 50 or more units. We are where we are with how the city was laid out up to this point. And where we're having real challenges is that it was laid out as single family, large lot zoned across the city. And now we're trying to put really huge dense projects right next to those buildings, especially something that has 50 or more units is gonna have significant neighborhood impacts. And I think we need to make accommodations for that and provide yet one more avenue, because as we all know, people are busy, it's hard to track things. So having one more chance for the public to have their say at a public meeting, I think is entirely reasonable. So I'm in support of this motion. Back to you, Commissioner Schiffern. I just wanted to ask playing director Butler, whether there's any course to appealing a staff decision? Yes, there is. The cost is $680 in that ballpark. So what I would say is that, yeah, people can appeal, but it's not going to be very effective to lower income people. It's gonna be a hardship for lower income people. So the more wealthy can do it, but the less wealthy are going to be discouraged. I think it's important to bring up the equity issue in terms of the appeal process. Okay, thank you for that. Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and wrap this up and we're bringing it to the first part of this two step process for the amended motion for Commissioner Schiffern for a public meeting process for developments with 50 or more. This first vote is just whether we're gonna bring that back again to actually vote yes or no to add it to the motion on the floor. So is everybody clear what we're voting on for the first motion or the first vote? Sorry, okay. Claire, can we have a roll call vote on accepting the amended motion for consideration? Commissioner Greenberg? Ah, yes. It's really hard to hear you. Commissioner Kennedy? There we go. No. Commissioner Maxwell? Aye. Commissioner Metzi Miller? No. Commissioner Schiffern? Aye. Claire Dawson? Aye. So that motion to bring it up for consideration passes. So now we have on the floor that motion for consideration to add to the main motion. Again, this is for a public meeting process for developments with 50 or more. Any comments before we go to the actual vote to amend the motion on the floor? Okay. Oh, go ahead, Commissioner Greenberg. Well, I just wanted us to have the ability to vote on it. I have to, so what happens if there's a tie vote on this? It loses. Okay. Got it. That's what we had last meeting. It loses. Okay. So I just want to put out there my concern just sort of having studied the history of these kinds of processes in the city and the state is just that I am sympathetic to the argument that the delay can really torpedo large projects and I'm somebody who is very supportive of, you know, the need for density, understanding the point that chair Dawson makes about the way our city was previously zoned and the disproportionate number and the inordinate number of single family home zone, zone districts. I think that we're really at a place now where certainly within the city of Santa Cruz vis-a-vis the rest of the county we can set a good example in terms of densification and that I really want to figure out a way that we as a commission and beyond can really encourage that move. And so I am sympathetic to the argument that the planning director and others and planning staff are making about the need to really support this process. I understand the concern about the appeal cost and I think that's a really good point but I think that if it's a significant enough problem that there could be a collective of people who organize to raise the funds necessary for an appeal. And I would want that there be some kind of really significant, you know, that it be a really significant problem and that there be that capacity then under those circumstances that it not be something that could lend itself towards, you know, other forms of delay. So I just want to state my position on this. Thank you. Great. Commissioner Mercedes Miller and then I'll put myself on deck. Oh, thank you, commissioner chair. I've been chair of Dawson for allowing me to speak again. I just wanted to point out that there was a very lengthy, very involved, very engaged process that took many years and I think there were over 100 meetings developing the general plan back in around 2010 to, you know, 2013 or whenever it was finally adopted. And what we're talking about is, you know, implementing the general plan which was thoroughly exhaustively discussed, commented upon and changed and amended over and over for many years until it became the adopted general plan. So implementing the general plan is all we're talking about doing here. And I think that we need to implement the general plan and that people who have had objections to densifying portions of the city and changing the zoning and upgrading the parcels and all of that stuff had that opportunity. That was well documented and well commented upon. And so I think we're really just, you know, we're just like beating a dead horse here in terms of having more public hearings to a lengthy public hearing process that already took place. Thank you. I just wanna add that as somebody who's done a lot of organizing as of late and really been focused on trying to reach the parts of our city where lower wage workers are hanging on which there are fewer and fewer. There's a real challenge in organizing when you don't have kind of a professional job, you're a low wage earner and you don't have flexibilities in your schedule. So I just wanna call out that saying like if it's a big enough problem then people can just organize around it. Disproportionally also we know that often most densification will abut sort of the lower income communities. We see that often via the gentrification that happens not just here but other places. And so I do think there's a real equity issue. And we all go to these meetings. They're not super accessible. It's daunting for people who've never been the one to come to one, but I for one wanna just give one more opportunity for public process especially for these very large units or very large developments that are likely gonna be abutting single family homes often in our lower income areas of the city. So Commissioner Shifrin and then Commissioner Greenberg. I just wanted to respond to the generality of the general plan. I mean, the general plan sets the tone. It's important and it's traditional that individual projects get reviewed not in terms of the full range of policies in the general plan. Not simply where they meet the maximum density but the general plan has all sorts of policies. And one of the parts of the process is to see if it's meeting all those other policies plus the zoning ordinance. And what we see with the zoning ordinance now is a series of objective standards that need to be implemented on a project by project basis in order to adequately implement a general plan. And I think it's important for a community that is committed to public participation to let the public be involved and be able to participate in reviewing major projects. And I think projects over 50 units are major. And over a hundred units, they should be heard by the Planning Commission and the public should be at a public hearing. And a public hearing, especially when there can be an appeal anyway, could actually expedite a process because it would have to happen if there is no requirement and staff makes a determination and then somebody appeals it, then there has to be a public hearing. I think that it's not unreasonable for large projects that where there is likely to be significant public concern to allow the public an opportunity to weigh in and give their comments on how all the objective standards been met, have they been met and have the objective standards been met adequately? I don't think that's unreasonable and I don't think it's going to undermine the ability of projects to get built and could even improve them. Thank you, Commissioner Schrupp and Commissioner Greenberg, please. Thanks, yeah, I just wanted to respond to the point about what the appeals would be about. And I think that now we're at this point of having these objective standards that there's been a community process behind and of course the community process behind the general plan. I don't see these hearings having much that the community is going to be able to weigh in on necessarily. I think if there's really a significant concern about the objective standards being misinterpreted, then that is something that should rise to the level of an appeal. I mean, if it's that significant, I think that the concern that is one I share that Shera Dawson raised about large developments abutting low-income communities is something that is to me more relevant as regards the inclusionary ordinance and the question of affordability of these developments than it is the meeting of objective standards. And so in terms of design standards and so forth. And so I think that we should think about those kinds of issues separately from one another. And I look forward to discussing the inclusionary ordinance or the inclusionary amendment separate from this amendment having to do with the process behind the approval. Thanks. Okay, great. I did have one question for staff. I was Googling around a little bit about the appeal. So I'm not sure if this is for Ms. Noisy or Mr. Butler, but it's around the cost of an appeal. And I just was Googling about a little bit and it seems that the cost is per parcel.  The cost would be like $10,000, $13,000. Is that right? Or is it really like $100 or something for the appeal? Great question. It would surprise me that it would be per parcel. Lee, do you know the, I think you're appealing the project application, right? Yeah, I don't have the fee schedule in front of me right now, but I know how we implement it. And that is if you're appealing a action even if there are multiple parcels, it's the one appeal fee, which I believe is 680 or roundabouts that. And I'll just add one thing since I'm on the floor. 24.04.130 speaks to the decision-making body with final authority on an application approval. I just wanted to point out that the zoning administrator, part two of that says zoning administrator may refer any of the matters on which he or she is authorized to act to the planning commission or historic preservation commission. So there are opportunities and we do that from time to time. For example, if we know that we were not gonna be supportive of an action at the zoning administrator level, rather than going through that process in the appeal, we might refer it straight to the planning commission. So I just wanted to put that out there as one criteria that would also allow for a public hearing, even if the code doesn't specify that one is mandated. Okay, I did see Ms. Donovan's hand up. Did you wanna say anything? I just wanted to say yes, that the appeal fee is for the project application. It's not per parcel. Okay, thank you for that clarification. Okay, so again, we have the amendment on the floor to amend the main motion for a public hearing for development over 50 or more units. And this would be to accept that amendment. That's what the vote is. Any other comments before we go to the vote here? Okay, Clark, could we have a roll call vote on the motion to amend? Mission or Greenberg? No. Mission or Kennedy? No. Mission or Maxwell? Aye. Mission or City Miller? No. Mission or Schifrin? Aye. Mission or Chair Dawson? So that is a tie and given our bylaws, that means that the motion fails. So we were back to the original motion on the floor, which is to accept the staff recommendation and back open for discussion. Commissioner Schifrin? I'd like to make a motion that for, in terms of zoning district regulations for all districts proposed for amendments, the approval by right for housing and mixed use projects will be allowed for developments from three to 100 units. A special use permit shall be required for all developments over 100 units. I'll go ahead and second that motion. So now again, we're in the same process, right? So we discussion right now, we could also go straight to a vote to bring it up for consideration up to commissioners. So do we have any comments on that? Or do we wanna go straight to a vote? Okay, I'm seeing Mr. Butler, did you have a comment? Sure, when you say approval by right, Commissioner Schifrin, I think what you're referring to there is the primary permitted use versus a special use. Is that, okay. Right, I just wanted to clarify because oftentimes that is used as a ministerial project, a by right project. And so there are distinctions there. So just wanted to clarify that. Well, let me be, understand what you're saying. By right does not necessarily mean it's ministerial. Typically it does. And so that's why I wanted to clarify. Because a 100 unit project under the proposed regulations could be by right, but it's still subject to CEQA, which would mean it's not ministerial. I think what you're referring to is a principally permitted use. Right. So principally permitted use versus by right have grown into separate distinctions. But I think we understand what the intent here is. Okay, so I hear what you're saying. Yes, that's a good clarification. I don't mean by right because by right would mean ministerial. What I mean as for all districts proposed for amendments, approval as a principally permitted use for housing and mixed use projects will be allowed for developments from three to a hundred units. A special use permit shall be required for all developments over a hundred units. So developments over a hundred units would not be considered principally permitted uses. And rather a special use permit and just so everyone understands, special use permit would go to the Planning Commission for review. We have two types of use permits and administrative use permit that mostly goes to a zoning administrator public hearing. There are a few that are approved administratively but in our code, the special use permits go to the Planning Commission for review. I think that's the intent is that larger projects come to the Planning Commission. Okay, Commissioner Greenberg. Okay, yeah, this is just to clarify. So the idea here is that these larger projects of a hundred units would come to the Planning Commission. Not, yeah, I just went to understand the process that would be kicked in here and not have another hearing. Is that right? That would be, they'd need to have a hearing there now. Not a separate hearing, sorry. Right. Right, just come to the Planning Commission. That's your proposal as a result of special use permit. Okay. Got it. Any other? Well, let me just clarify because if they happen to need other permits like they want to plan a development permit that would have to, they'd need a special use permit and a plan development permit and that would come to the Planning Commission. So sometimes projects need more than one permit. So some of them would require going to the Planning Commission anyway, but assuming that it isn't a density boner project, it doesn't want a PD a hundred units or more would still come to the Planning Commission. Okay, I see Miss Noisy and then we'll go back to Commissioner Greenberg to make sure her questions were answered and then perhaps we'll go to see if we want to bring this for consideration. Hi, thanks, Chair. So I just wanted to clarify. So if a project has to go to a hearing body, so what am I trying to say? If a project requires multiple permits, so frequently a project will require a demolition permit and a design permit and a heritage tree removal permit and historic resource permit. If in the case of advisory bodies, so like in the case of historic resource permit being involved with that project, the Historic Resources Commission would make a recommendation on that component of the project, but then if the, in this case, so in this scenario where a special use permit is required, that would be the highest hearing body, the highest level of review required, and the whole project would be considered together. So at that hearing the process that you're suggesting would be that the Planning Commission would have the power to review both the use and the design of a project. So you would be elevating that, what in the staff proposal would have been an administrative use permit to a public hearing, I'm sorry, an administrative design permit conforming with the objective standards to a public hearing level, like full design permit where you're making findings. So you would then have access to the whole project, not just the use, but also the design. Is that, does that answer your question, Commissioner Greenberg, or did you have any additional comments? Yeah, I guess it does. I'm just curious why this proposal and also I suppose whether this, you know, kind of changes people's concerns about the impact this would have on the process from the planning department's perspective as well. So Commissioner Schifrin, I'm curious what you're thinking is a little bit more on this and also not, I realize it's getting late, but I just would like to be informed as to why you're proposing this. And then if Planner Noisy would like to respond to thoughts on this, I'd be curious to understand that too. Thanks. Well, this is similar to my previous motion that failed, but it has to do with having, you know, read over the proposed changes to the zoning ordinance, finding that any project, no matter how large, would be a principally permitted use in almost every city district is, seems very excessive to me. And that's why I think, I don't, I think it's, I think it's really unfortunate from a planning perspective where a 300 unit or a 390 unit project or 400 unit project or, you know, or a 200 unit project would be considered a principally permitted use as a development in the city. That's my perspective. I know other members of the commission have a very different perspective, but that's fine. I mean, I think, you know, I think it's important in terms of making public policy that it's clear to the public what the decision makers are doing. And what this motion says is that this, the public policy is not going to be that for any mixed use of housing project, no matter how many, how big it is, it's going to be considered a principally permitted use and does not require a use permit. Yeah, I just wanted to jump in there. I mean, I think the staff has made it really clear. And I think the other commissioners that support the staff view has made it clear, you know, they feel like it slows down the creation that slows down development. So I, you know, this is the same, this is on the same trajectory as the previous motion. And, you know, my feeling hasn't changed either. So, you know, these are huge projects. And when I walk around town and tell people that 17 and 15 stories are going to end up south of Laurel, there's a really big reaction because people don't follow land use decisions. And that, you know, that ship has sailed, right? And so I think providing the opportunity for people to actually interact with all of this development that's coming down the pipe is just good public policy. And assuming that, you know, people with their busy lives have been tracking all of this stuff, I think is not a good assumption. And I would rather err on the side of providing one more opportunity, especially when we're talking about 100 or more units that we go through the full process and have the full discussion. And so that's kind of where I'm at on it. Any other comments? Okay, so we're in the two-step process again. This is just a vote to bring it up for consideration. So this is not approving it. This is to bring it up for consideration. This is the amendment for a design permit for developments over a hundred units. Clerk, can we have a roll call vote, please? It says for the special use permit. I'm sorry, I misstated that for a special use permit for developments with a hundred or more units. Thank you for that correction. Clerk, can we have a roll call vote, please? Mr. Greenberg? Yes. Mr. Kennedy? No. Mr. Maxwell? Aye. Mr. Nermes-Siddy-Miller? No. Mr. Nershifrin? Aye. Mr. Dawson? Aye. So now this is up for our consideration. To amend the motion on the floor. Do we have any comments before we go for a vote to accept this amendment? Hey, Clerk, can we have... Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead, Mr. Greenberg. I'm curious if there's any sense of whether other communities do something similar to this or how we compare to given this new landscape that we're in statewide as regards objective standards, whether there are other communities that have taken this kind of approach that's kind of a moderating approach, I suppose in terms of community input. I don't know if Planner Noisy, you have any sense of that? So... Go ahead, Mr. Noisy. Oh, thank you, Chair, sorry. So jurisdictions are still adopting their objective standards. So kind of like over the last sort of six months, we started seeing them get adopted in various places. And it's really a mix, you know, depending on the size of the jurisdiction and like the intensity of development that they're expecting, they're approaching it in sort of different ways. I will say like from what I've seen, it looks like universally there's been like a lowering of level of review. I can't say for certain that all jurisdictions are just making these uses principally permitted. And like that's kind of the... When you read the state law, it's pretty clear that like if housing isn't allowed use, you have to allow housing to be built at the density it's planned, which is sort of the definition of an allowed use. And so I think that probably we're gonna see more jurisdictions moving in that direction. And at least functionally, that's gonna be what's happening. It's still just really too early to say like exactly how all different places are doing it. What we did learn just one last thing with the SB35 application is that you can identify different levels of like who the final word is, on whether the objective standards have been met. And most places do identify the staff as being that final place to determine for an SB35 application that it is complete and compliant with objective standards. Now that's an extremely curtailed timeline and streamlined process that an SB35 application goes through and not every project would go through that. So it's appropriate to have different levels of process and different types of process for other kind of projects that have CEQA and that do require a discretionary review, right? Like these projects in the staff proposal would still require a discretionary administrative design permit. It creates that right of appeal. It means CEQA applies to them. So anyway, that was probably more information than you wanted. That was really helpful, thank you. And it's good to know about the discretionary review process as well. Thank you pretty much. Okay, any more comments before we bring this for a vote to approve or deny? Commissioner Schifrin. Yeah, this just occurred to me from what Ms. Noisy was saying in terms of the fact that these, principally, these projects would be subject to CEQA. The CEQA process is a public process. And having a decision made on a CEQA document without a public hearing seems, I really kind of wonder about that. Maybe I can ask Steph, because as I understand CEQA, whether it's a negative declaration or an EIR, I don't know about exemptions, categorical exemptions, but there is a public process certainly for negative declarations and EIRs that would require some public decision. So how is the CEQA process going to play in with? Is it just expected that they're all going to be categorical exemptions? And even those can be challenged. Thanks for that question, Commissioner Schifrin. And we do process administratively documents that are or permits. That are discretionary and involve CEQA reviews. Most of those are exemptions, right? So even say a minor modification or we have commercial uses that go through administrative approval processes and have an exemption associated with them. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be. So a mitigated negative declaration could occur. Now with, I would have to look and see if through, if there's an EIR associated with it, because when you have to make a statement of overriding considerations, I'd have to look into CEQA to see if that statement of overriding considerations actually has to be adopted at a public hearing. And so that could trigger either a planning commission or a council review if there is an EIR that involves a significant unavoidable impact. Because of course we can do a environmental impact report for purposes of process that doesn't necessarily have a significant unavoidable impact and therefore would not have a statement of overriding considerations. So I think it's a good question. I think in most instances it wouldn't trigger a, it wouldn't on its face trigger a public hearing. I would need to look and take a look at the statement of overriding considerations in the CEQA guide books to confirm whether or not that in and of itself. And I will see how fast I can do that. If I could just add on to that chair, is that okay? Yeah, absolutely. So I think the key piece that Lee's saying is that the CEQA process, the CEQA law itself could trigger a public hearing. And that could happen outside of us having to have that in our code. If CEQA calls for a public hearing, we will have to do a public hearing about a process in order to comply with the law. And that would happen. Okay. Commissioner Schiffer, any other comments? No, I just think having the CEQA process being there and knowing the amount of concern that there is with the CEQA process, I think it's just another reason for larger projects needing to have a, seeing the light of day in terms of a public hearing. Okay. Any other comments before we go to a vote to, for this amendment? Well, I think we may be waiting for planner, director Butler, but I don't know if that one. Well, I think Sarah answered the question really. Oh, okay. If it requires a public hearing, there'll be a public hearing. Okay, got it. And I will say, I don't think that, I'm just looking at it right here. And it says the decision-making agency to make the determination. So I don't think that it mandates it. But again, this is a scenario where in certain instances we could use the discretion that's allowed by the zoning administrator to refer things to the planning commission or the city council. And as Sarah said, if any of them do the public process, the public hearing process, then we would of course follow that. And there is, I'll just note, a separate public processes that are required for some CEQA procedures. So, whether that's release of the draft document or a public scoping meeting as part of an EIR and a notice of preparation and so forth. So there are separate public processes, but not necessarily a mandated public hearing process through CEQA. Okay. I think we are ready to vote on this motion to amend. Clerk, could we have a roll call please? Commissioner Greenberg? No. Commissioner Kennedy? I love it. No. Commissioner Maxwell? Aye. Commissioner Missetti-Miller? No. Commissioner Schifrin? Aye. Dear Dawson. So again, we deadlocked, and so that means the motion fails. We are back to the original motion on the floor, which is to accept the staff recommendation. Any other comments? I have one other motion to make. This has to do with section 24-16-020. It was on page 127 of our staff report at the last meeting. And the motion is to add the following sentence at the end of the paragraph. Quote, projects with a 30% density bonus shall have a 25% inclusionary requirement. Projects with a 50% density bonus shall have a 30% inclusionary requirement. Okay. I like the second one. We have a second from Commissioner Maxwell. Same two-step process. Do we have a comment before we vote on bringing it up for official consideration? Commissioner Missetti-Miller? Yeah, given the results of the last two votes, can we simply vote whether or not we wanna even vote on this matter before we have a discussion about it? Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to do that. So again, this is for bringing it up for consideration for a vote. Can we have a roll call vote, please? Clark, can we have a roll call vote, please? All right, take the law for me to unmute. All right, Commissioner Greenberg? Yes. Commissioner Kennedy? No. Commissioner Maxwell? Aye. Commissioner Missetti-Miller? No. Commissioner Schifrin? Aye. Good awesome. Aye. So that motion carries four to three. This is now up for consideration for accepting the amendment or denying the amendment on the floor regarding the inclusionary for density bonus projects. Anybody wanna make any comments? I think it was four to two. Okay, four to two. Still passes. Okay, looks like we can bring it forward for a vote to accept the amendment. This would be an amendment to the main motion. Go ahead, Commissioner Greenberg. Okay, I just quickly wanted to say and I realize we're all exhausted that I support this amendment and that I understand the concern about the NEXA study. And I just wanted to reiterate a discussion that we had regarding NEXA studies when we decided to increase the inclusionary to 20%. And I think a concern that I have, and I brought this up in a presentation a few meetings ago, is that one of the things we're not looking at in thinking about adding dense housing, which I of course think is incredibly important in our town, is the impact it's going to have on surrounding areas in terms of issues of affordability and issues of displacement that could be caused as a result of gentrification. And unlike many other communities in our own county as well as in our region, we are not taking upon ourselves any kind of study of displacement effects in a significant way, not only direct displacement of people in places where the buildings are going but adjacent displacement effects. And so, and nor do NEXA studies do that kind of research. They look at the issue from the perspective of developers and they don't look at the issue from the perspective of the impact it could have on surrounding communities. And so feasibility versus displacement. And so I think that it's, I think it's from a research perspective in terms of impacts, it's a very one-sided kind of an analysis. And during the last discussion we had on this topic, I shared a lot of research on this issue. So I just wanted to put that point out there. In addition, I wanted to note that there are other, while it's true that this would be a city-wide, amendment to the, in terms of these standards, that most of this would be going on in areas of, for instance, the downtown plan and that there certainly are examples statewide and regionally of downtown plans that have higher inclusionary. And so I just wanted to point out that that we would be you know, just doing something that's similar to other communities in this regard. So, and it would specifically apply of course, to large dense projects. Thanks. Ms. Noisy, did you have something to add? Thank you, Chair. I just, I'm sure if you could share those examples with us, that would be really helpful. We have looked for them and we have not found any that had a requirement for more than 20% inclusionary. We have found several places that had a goal to do 50%, a goal to do 25%, but they were gonna meet that goal through a combination of, you know, city on land and doing 100% below market rate projects through collecting fees. You know, there were a lot of other factors that would go into that that could really sort of make that goal achievable. So if you have examples of other places where they have raised the requirement, we would love to see those. It would be really helpful to us. Oops. Okay, yeah, I can send. I mean, my understanding is that Berkeley is one? No, I actually asked Berkeley about that because I know that came up in May and I sent them an email and I also went to that because you referenced a meeting at Watsonville. So I went and I pulled up the minutes from that meeting and I looked at all of those plans and they set goals and they set, you know, ambitious goals, 50% for the Adeline corridor, which is in Berkeley runs from like the edge, the like southern edge down to the Ashby BART station. So they have a 50% goal for like the new development and that to be affordable below market rate, but they're gonna meet that through a big development at the BART station and other city owned property and like other kinds of incentives, right? Which that's a great goal and we need to have all of those tools, right? Like all of those pieces are really important to making that work and making it all happen together. So, yeah. And I think Santa Monica, I think there's other, I mean, but I will send you additional. That'd be great. Yeah, could you just pass those on, you know, when you get a chance, that would be great. Commissioner Schifrin, and then we're gonna close this discussion and bring it to a vote. In 1978, when the people passed the measure J in the county, it had a 15% inclusionary requirement where 15% of all newly developed housing needed to be affordable by moderate and below moderate income people. When that was being, that policy measure referendum was being put into ordinance that became the inclusionary ordinance. It was, I think the first in the state where the inclusionary requirement was being imposed, certainly it was the first in the state where it was voted on and approved by a vote of the people. At that time, there was a committee that was set up of developers who said there's no way that 15% could work. Inclusionary is not feasible. So I don't mind being first. It's, I think it's justified in terms of the need, the need through the arena targets for below moderate, below very low income and low income. It's justified in terms of the increased densities and lower parking standards that developments will receive. I don't see that we have evidence that it won't work. And I think we should be leaders in this area and move forward with really pushing for affordable housing. And when, if the council should approve this and make a, add this as part of the inclusionary, as part of our next housing element, we can go to bat with the housing community development department and advocate for the kind of the additional affordable housing that they say they want. Yeah, I just wanted to echo that point if I can just raise my hand again, sorry. And to say that I don't have a problem with us being first either, though I do think there are examples. And I think it's great for us to own that and to set a really good example for the state as we have in the past. And as Santa Cruz has kind of prided itself on and to say that as I shared in my presentation, it's really real. I mean, even the presentation of the downtown plan, let alone the building of the downtown plan is having gentrifying effects on the one remaining low income neighborhood, which is right next door in our town, which is lower ocean and beach flats in terms of the multifamily housing there and the sales of those properties. So it's really an enormous risk in our community. And we need to do everything we can both to study it and to do everything we can to mitigate it. And increasing the inclusionary, it seems to me to what is already the inclusionary within Density Bonus Projects, which has been something that has been supported. And I would imagine would continue to be supported given what's going on in our housing market and given the pandemic and the movement of people from Silicon Valley to our community is not something that I think that is something that we can expect can be supported. And if we're gonna do a next to study again, that we do it in a holistic fashion and look at it in relation to displacement effects as well. So I really do support our taking leadership role on this initiative. Thank you. Okay, with that, we're gonna go ahead and close discussion and bring this forward to a vote. Now, again, just to be clear, this is to accept or deny the motion, which would amend the main motion. Clerk, can we have a roll call vote, please? Commissioner Greenberg? Aye. Commissioner Kennedy? No. Commissioner Maxwell? Aye. Commissioner City Miller? No. Commissioner Schifrin? Aye. Claire Dawson? Aye. So this motion carries four to two, so just process. Now we have amended the main motion regarding the inclusionary for density bonus projects. Otherwise the motion on the floor aligns with the staff recommendation. Everybody clear what the motion on the floor is? Okay, it looks like it. Are we ready to go ahead and bring that to a roll call vote? Last call for any comments? Okay, we're bringing the amended motion for a roll call vote. Roll call vote, please, clerk. Commissioner Greenberg? Aye. Commissioner Kennedy? No. Commissioner Maxwell? Aye. Commissioner City Miller? No. Commissioner Schifrin? Aye. I'm not looking at this for the moment. Commissioner, Chair Dawson? So we've moved the objective standards with the inclusionary amendment and that closes out item number four on our agenda and we'll move right into item number five, which is the zoning ordinance updates. Could we have a staff report, please? Good evening. I'm Catherine Donovan, Senior Planner with the Advanced Planning Division and let me just share my screen if I can make it listen to me. Okay, can you see this presentation? No. I see Commissioner Dawson, though. No. Yeah. Nope, no, here we go. Yes. Okay, and me, apparently. Now you. Okay, so this is the zoning ordinance update for July 21st, 2022. And why are we doing an update? The update is to provide internal consistency in our zoning ordinance. It is to improve and streamline development processes. It's to make the zoning ordinance consistent with state law to update our standards and regulations and to make minor revisions for clarification and ease of use. And overall, it's simply to improve the ordinance to better meet the needs of the city's residents. The update comes in as two separate ordinances, one of which is also amending the local coastal program, the other of which does not affect the local coastal program. And we just do that for ease in taking it to the coastal commission. We don't like to take things that they don't have curview on. So examples of amendments that have to do with consistency, we are proposing to remove the conditional driveway permit remnant sections. Those were supposed to have been taken out with an earlier zoning ordinance amendment. And there was a mis-characterization. Right. Excuse me.  You wanted to see the speaker, but. Do we need to have tech help or can we just continue? It's fine to just continue the way it is. I think someone might have had their mic on by accident. Oh, okay. Okay. So this was an error. It was supposed to be removed with an earlier amendment, but the wording was misunderstood or was not exactly correct. And the code publishing only removed a portion of the conditional driveway permit. So we need to remove the whole thing for consistency. We also are updating a section that is in almost every zoning district section in our zoning ordinance, which is called a use determination. It's in all these sections right now. It's worded slightly differently in different sections. And for consistency and ease for the planning department to use, we're just making it the same across the board. It doesn't really change anything in practical terms. It just makes it all consistent. We're also, there's a list in the zoning ordinance of use permits that don't require public hearings. We're updating that list to be consistent with the actual use permits that don't require public hearings. And we're also updating the decision-making body table. There are these two pieces are in the administration chapter. And sometimes when changes are made to processes in other chapters, we forget to update those chapters. So this is just to make everything consistent. We also like do our best to streamline all of our processes to make it easier for ourselves, but also to make it easier for the public. One of the proposals is to remove the public hearing requirement for a low-risk alcohol permit. That sounds like it's something really important. Basically, it's a permit to allow a restaurant to serve alcohol. And right now, we almost never have anyone about the business owner come to these public hearings and there's never any objection. So it's a waste of money for the business owner and it's a waste of time for everyone involved. And as we were speaking earlier on the objective standards, if someone objects, there is a public notice that is printed out the business. And if someone objects, they can appeal the permit, but we have not ever had that happen in recent years for a restaurant. Another item for streamlining, it's really just a clarification. There's a process called a minor modification that is to make a minor change in an existing permit. And if it increases the intensity of the project, it can only be done once in five years. It is implied, but not specifically stated that if it does not increase the intensity, there is not that five year limitation, once in five year limitation. So this simply makes that implication clear and states it outright. And then a third streamlining process that we're proposing to revise our fencing standards to allow some of the more less controversial projects basically to realign our fenced standards so that a specific types of fences would be allowed without a conditional fence permit. And I'll talk a little bit more about exactly what those fences are in a further section. So we also have amendments so that our ordinance will conform with state law. One, there was a change in the last couple of years to where the large family daycare homes or how the large family daycare homes are allowed. The last time we updated this section, which I think was in 2017, they could require a use permit and they were limited in where they would be allowed. And since then the state law has changed so that large family daycare homes are now allowed by right in any residential unit in the city if the resident of the unit is providing that care. So that's just a simple update. That along with the use determination is what made this ordinance so large because it applied to almost every single district in the city. So it's a relatively minor change but had a lot of pages. We've also proposed some updates to our demolition and relocation assistance ordinance and I will talk about that a little further on also. And then in our archeological resources section there is a requirement that there be a city approved list of known archeological sites. And there's state law that says that archeological sites should be kept confidential to prevent them from being looted. And so that is the requirement to have a list, a council approved list is inconsistent with the state law of keeping things confidential. So that is why we're making that change. And getting back to the fences updates to our standards. Currently there's a requirement for a corner lot to have an eight foot setback before a fence can be six foot high. We get a lot of people who have corner lots and want to be able to use their side yards in a more private manner. And a large number of our conditional fence permits are for this particular issue. And so what we have proposed is to change that eight foot setback to a three foot setback requiring that there be landscaping between the fence and the property line and that the landscaping be maintained. It would also that exterior side yard setback would have to be setback from the front of the property either the district standard or to align with the front of the building whichever is further. And I put this in as an example that the district standard for the R15, our basic single family zoning is 20 feet. So that's just to give you an idea that would mean that the six foot fence would have to be setback 20 feet from the front property before it would be three and a half feet until you hit that 20 foot or the aligning with the building front. Another change to our standards several years ago, we updated our accessory building and structure section and we took out structures and made it just buildings. And since then, current planning has discovered that there was a reason that it was for both structures and buildings. And so we're proposing to add accessory structures back into that section. And we're also proposing to make some changes to what is allowed in the front and exterior side yards outside of what's called the clear corner triangle and that's a line of sight distance to make sure that you're not blocking your view of traffic. And the changes that we would make would allow buildings which are defined as having solid walls and a roof, buildings that are five feet higher, less and less than 30 square feet. Could be allowed in the front or exterior side yard setback and structures which do not have solid sides would be allowed if they were eight feet high or less with no more than 120 square feet. And what we're thinking there is mainly things like pergolas and gazebos. And I'll talk a little bit more about that structure's piece right now. So when we originally proposed that, we hadn't considered that because we designed, we defined a building as having solid walls and a roof that it could be interpreted that an accessory structure, that something that had solid walls but no roof might qualify as an accessory structure. And so to ensure that we didn't have the solid walls in the front, we want to add this sentence in purple here. Any accessory structures located in the front or exterior side yard must be open in nature and must provide and maintain a minimum of 90% visual permeability above the first foot in height. And the intent of that is to keep the front yard open to provide a neighborly context so that people walking down the street can greet their neighbors who might be sitting on the porch and the people sitting on the porch can view what's going on in the street. And it just keeps the city open and allows a more community. Other revisions that are proposed include removing references to the redevelopment agency which no longer exists to revise downtown recovery plan to downtown plan. That was a change that was also in 2017 but we missed a couple of places to change the wording of currently, there are certain projections that are allowed and the wording currently is conforming interior side yards and we want to change that to required setbacks. It gives the current planning division a little more leeway with things like patios and entry porches that are less than two feet in height, things like that. We're also proposing to add the planning director as an initiator of the zoning map or municipal code amendments. And this is sort of a clarification because a lot of our amendments are directed by the general plan or our three-year work plan or some other planning document that is approved by council. So technically they are approved by council but by saying that the planning director can initiate something that just clears up a little bit of this gray area. We're also add definitions to the flexible density units that were decided upon after the flexible density unit project had been advertised and so they couldn't be added at that time. So we're just bringing them in now and we're adding a clarification to the method of determining building height and we're updating the definition of family daycare homes. We also presented you with a supplemental memo after we had sent out the packet, we were discussing the amendments that had been made to the demolition and relocation assistance area and we realized that the way the amendments had been made we were actually removing some protections for tenants because the state regulations only apply to housing project and if there was a project that removed a residential unit or two or three and it was not being replaced by housing but was being replaced by something else or wasn't being replaced at all our city standards would protect tenants in that situation where the state standards would not. So we sent you the memo with those revisions so that we keep our local protections in there and that is my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you for that. Looks like Commissioner Kennedy and when you get a chance, Ms. Donovan could you please stop sharing your screen? Go ahead, Commissioner Kennedy. I think thanks for bringing this forward. I love seeing this kind of correcting everything and making it sync up. I observe that fence condition a lot like during the lockdown when I was walking around my neighborhood over and over again and I love it. I think we wonder if we should do more and allow that fence to have a zero setback instead of that three feet. Could you respond to some thoughts about that? It would make more of a wall effect but it would give people three more feet of yard which is really valuable. Right, well from a planning perspective we're very interested in keeping the community feel and having a six foot fence right at the property line is very provides a really closed off feeling. It makes it unpleasant to walk down the sidewalk. It doesn't give you a feeling that you're interacting with your neighbors and having that three feet of landscaping can make a huge difference. And so that was our thinking that we didn't really want to make it totally closed off. We wanna allow the property owners to have a little more yard space but we also don't wanna take away the whole community feel there. Okay, I hear that and that's acceptable. If you wanted to do that you could still go get the conditional fence permit and run through that process theoretically. Theoretically, yes. I'm not sure if staff would go to approve that but theoretically you could. Okay, thanks for explaining that. Any more clarifying questions before we go to public comment? Okay, I'm seeing no clarifying questions from commissioners. Now is the time that we'll go ahead and bring item five for the zoning amendments for public comment. If you are on the Zoom call you can use the raise hand function. If you are attending by phone, please press star nine now. Okay, it looks like we have some folks who'd like to comment. Clerk would you please call on the first person and please identify yourself once you come off mute if you choose to and you will have three minutes to speak. Go ahead, clerk. Thank you. All right, speaker night. I'm gonna go ahead and unmute you. Call or go ahead. Oh, sorry. My name's Kindred Sparks. That's actually my son's name, Knight. Can you hear me now? Yes, absolutely, go ahead. I'm so sorry to take up your time so late in the evening and I'm not sure I have much of a chance in changing anyone's mind but I do wanna take the opportunity to speak up in regard to the suggested amendment surrounding children's play structures and the ordinance update. I'm the mother of the amazing young man that built a tree house after he found nothing in city planning against building tree houses and this triggered the amendments specific to play structures. So as we all know, Santa Cruz is large and diverse and full of families with young children and making rules about what type of temporary play structure a child can have. It feels like an overstep personally. I think it's important to rem