Good morning. Good morning everybody. Thank you for joining us today for the planning commission meeting. Today's date is June 8, 2022, and the time is 930. Today's meeting is completely remote via zoom. There are a couple of different ways for everybody to participate in today's meeting. If your computer is equipped with a microphone, it's recommended that you participate by the planning commission zoom meeting link, which is posted on the planning department's homepage at sccoplanning.com. Alternatively, if your computer is not equipped with a microphone, you may provide comment by telephone. And to call in please dial 1-669-900-6833 and then when prompted enter your collaboration code. The number for that is 814-8152-8029 and that number is also posted on our webpage. During key points in today's meeting time we provided for members of the public to provide their testimony. Speakers will be muted until called on to speak, and I will ask participants who wish to provide testimony either remotely raise your hand by selecting the hand icon on the zoom link, or if calling in by telephone, by remotely raising your hand by pressing star nine on your telephone. I will then call participants either by your name or by the last four digits of your telephone number. If you're participating via the zoom link, when I call on you to speak, you'll see a pop up on your screen that says unmute, please accept the pop up, state your name for the record and provide your testimony. If calling via telephone, you must unmute yourself by pressing star six on the phone. When you do this should be given three minutes to speak. If at any time you have difficulty connecting today's meeting via the zoom link or by calling in via telephone, please email Michael lamb at Michael dot lamb and that's spelled LAM at Santa Cruz County dot us. He'll be checking my email periodically throughout the meeting and so he's on standby ready to assist you. So okay it appears that we're situated so I'll now turn everything over to the planning Commission chair Tim Gordon. Good morning chair Gordon. Good morning, Miss Jess, thank you for the intro and we are glad to have you today. And looking forward to this hearing today is Juneteh and we can open this excuse me at 932 and we can call this meeting to order could we please have a roll call Miss Jess. Yes. All right, Commissioner Dan. Here. Commissioner shape afraid us. No, Commissioner shepherd. Commissioner shepherd. You're muted. Yes, she's muted. Commissioner here. Yes, I'm here. Thank you. Commissioner lasin be here. And chair Gordon here. All right. Thank you so much with that we can move on to agenda item number two here additions and questions to the agenda do we have any today Miss Jess. Yes, item number seven, which was a public hearing of an application 171213 has been taken off the agenda it's been renoticed and rescheduled for June 22. Okay, moving on to agenda item number three declarations of expert a communications do you have any declarations by any of the commissioners today. Thank you. Move on to agenda item number four. This is the or communications. This is time when members of the public have the opportunity to speak on items that are not on the agenda today. Miss Jess, do we have any members of the public I'd like to speak at this time. I'm not seeing anybody at this point me to hang on 23. I'm not seeing any hands raised at this point. Excuse me. Chair Gordon. Yes, I forgot to say I have talked to staff about sustainability draft. I'm not sure if I need to. That's ex parte but. Absolutely understood. Thank you so much. Appreciate that. Okay, then seeing no members of the public I'd like to speak at this time on agenda item number four we can close that and move on to agenda number five consent agenda item, maybe 361 resolution. We know it well. Are there any commissioners I'd like to make a motion and a second on this. I'll move approval. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Han. See commissioner lays and beats. Second. Thank you so much. Okay, we have a motion and a second at this time we can just take a vote and all those in favor of the motion, please say I. And any opposed. Okay, hearing none. The motion passes. And the second by commissioner lays and beats. And the second by commissioner lays and beats. And we can move along agenda item number six approval minutes from the May 25th planning commission meeting. Any commissioners I'd like to make a motion on this item. I'll move approval. Thank you. And the second by commissioner lays and beat. Then we can go ahead and take a vote on this matter as well. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Any opposed. Any abstaining. Okay, hearing none, we can move the motion along and close that item. At this time we are going to get to the meat of our agenda item today and it's item number six, or excuse me, looking at the minutes. It is item number eight. I would like to consider the sustainability policy and regulatory update. I would like to give a quick update here or just kind of talk through the process today. This is the second in numerous series of study sessions that we're going to look at the new planning department and we're going to take a look at the sustainability update. You know, not really sure how long these might take. So if we get to 1130, we'll need to take in a 30 minute lunch break. And so if we see that time coming, we can just all expect that. We'll bring it back to the commission for initial questions and, you know, hope to move really quickly to public comment to let members of the public speak before we really dive into our major discussion after public comment we'll have, you know, time for the commission to have final discussions on this topic. There's no action needed today. It's informational only. And so that being said, Miss just do we have members of staff available for a report at this time. Yes, I believe you're muted. All right, so I'm today we have Stephanie Hansen, who is the principal assistant planning director in who's going to be presenting on this item. And she is already available to talk good morning Stephanie. Good morning, Lizanne. Can you all see me. Oh, wait a second and be. Good morning, everybody. Can you see me and hear me now. Yes. Good morning. Thanks. It took a second to get elevated there. With me today also is any Murphy she'll be presenting today. Could you elevate her as well please. I believe she's. There we go. Okay, great. I think we'll need to unmute. I'll go ahead and share my screen here. So, can you all see that first slide. It's hard to tell when you're sharing. Okay, so good morning commissioners. Today, we have a presentation for you will be discussing the sustainability policy and regulatory update. My name is Stephanie Hansen. I'm the one of the assistant directors in the new community development and infrastructure department. Annie Murphy senior planner will also be presenting with me this morning. This presentation as Tim mentioned is the second in a series of study sessions on this project. Today we're going to focus on the built environment, community design and amendments to the general plan and zoning maps. For today's study session will begin with a review of the overall development framework that's in the project, and then we'll move on to the details of the proposed policy and code changes for residential land. Also reviewing how new design guidelines help to shape residential development. We'll then pause the presentation I think because there's a lot of material here today. So that the commissioners can ask some questions on the material they've seen so far. And it'll be an opportunity for targeted discussion on residential development. We'll move on to commercial and industrial development and we'll have an optional break in there for any questions from the commission, or we can just move on at that point. And then we'll review the zoning map amendments and general plan map amendments and conclude with the project schedule, and then head into questions and comments from the commission and the public. We'll start out with kind of defining what the built environment is as it's anticipated in the project and broadly speaking is your areas of our communities that are developed with buildings roads and infrastructure. In today's presentation we're going to focus on policies and standards related to buildings and building sites in residential commercial and industrial districts. So in session number three on June 22nd will review aspects of the built environment that's related to transportation and public facilities as well as parks. Policies related to development on agricultural land specifically will be covered in the July 13 study session. The built environment has been renamed from land use to excuse me of the general plan has been renamed from land use to the built environment element. And this provides the main policy basis for the built environment. In this chapter you can find policies regarding the county's overall development framework, as well as policies for residential commercial and industrial development for building and site design generally. As we mentioned in the first study session environmental justice is a new important topic that's required for general plans. This chapter incorporates many of the county's environmental justice policies, including those for disadvantaged communities. The county code implements these built environment policies chapter 1310, which regulates land uses and building types are allowed in. And what's allowed in each zone district and provides development standards, such as building height setbacks that dictate what form buildings may take. Also today county code chapter 1311 provides design standards and requires site development permits and design review for certain project types. This chapter is closely linked with the new county design guidelines, which provide best practices for the design of buildings and sites to support sustainable and context appropriate in fill development in the urban areas. In certain areas of the county special plans also apply to development. No changes have been proposed to these existing plans. The guiding design principles for the pleasure point commercial corridor, reflecting the 2018 pleasure point commercial corridor vision and guiding principles from are being adopted as part of the county design guidelines. And that's what the appendix be in the guidelines. Objective standards for commercial properties in the corridor are also provided in the commercial regulations in the SCCC, the Santa Cruz County code. So moment on the development framework just to kind of set the stage here. Our framework for Santa Cruz County, County focuses on development within our existing urban areas, providing natural resources, or excuse me preserving natural resources and rural areas. The urban pattern makes efficient use of our urban land in order to reduce the need to expand urban services and infrastructure beyond the urban and rural services lines, which have been in place since the passage of measure, measure J in the 1970s. The sustainability update continues to reinforce the importance of those lines with built environment policies and regulations of focus growth within the USL and RSL. On this slide shows land within the county's urban services line shown in the dark blue line spanning from Live Oak to Rio del Mar. Soquel Avenue is a dominant commercial corridor shown in light blue with a series of employment and commercial centers surrounded by residential neighborhoods. Live Oak commercial centers and residential neighborhoods are shaped by an intersecting pattern of roadways leading to the coast and also to destinations such as the city of Santa Cruz and the city of Capitola. Key corridors in Live Oak include 17th Avenue, Capitola Road and Portola Drive, which is shown in pink. Other main street corridors include C Cliff Drive, Porter Street and Main Street and Soquel and 41st Avenue north of Portola. The sustainability update plans to accommodate growth primarily around these key corridors. This development framework allows for coordinated development of the built environment with improvements to transportation infrastructure that can support this development. Offer areas near key corridors represent focus growth areas which are shown in light purple on the map. This is where higher density development may be appropriate due to infrastructure and services. The sustainability update framework also aims for services and amenities to be located within a 15 minute walk from home for urban county residents. Now Annie is going to lead us through a discussion of the residential development policies and standards. Thank you Stephanie. Santa Cruz County, like much of California, faces a housing crisis, both in terms of supply and affordability. Addressing the housing crisis is key to ensuring a sustainable, livable and equitable future for our community. In the last 30 years, policies and zoning standards have largely favored the construction of single family dwellings on large lots and very few multifamily housing units have been built. Single family dwellings are increasingly out of reach to all but the wealthiest residents. In the first quarter of 2022, only 13% of households in the county would afford to purchase a median price single family dwelling, requiring an annual income of $282,000. Single family dwellings on standard sized lots also limit the housing supply as they require a large area of land per dwelling for their driving up costs. For rental housing, Santa Cruz County residents currently need to earn about $48 per hour, which is 3.2 times the state minimum wage to afford the average monthly rent of $2,500. Currently in the county, there's also a mismatch between the size of dwellings and household size. While 26% of the households in our community are single person households, only 17% of the units are one bedroom or studios. To address this housing crisis, new policies support more housing choices to ensure housing is available to residents of all household sizes and incomes. An additional goal is to support infill housing, which is additional housing within existing neighborhoods and in urban areas where services are available. This will be accomplished by ensuring that policies, development standards and project reviews support economically viable multifamily projects. The review process for development projects will be discussed at the July 13 study session. Policy supporting infill development in urban areas also ensure the continued preservation of open space and natural resources support walkable neighborhoods and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. New policies also support the development of higher density projects with compact units and more overall floor area on a site or higher building intensity in areas near transit and services. An additional goal is to ensure that the county can meet our regional housing needs allocation, or RENA, which is the total number of housing units and affordable units our county must plan for in our next housing element cycle. The county anticipates a significant increase over previous requirements. The sustainability update sets the policy and regulatory framework to enable the county to meet our housing obligation. Accommodating our sixth cycle RENA obligation will be addressed directly in the county's next housing element update. The primary strategy of addressing the housing crisis is to support the development of a variety of housing choices, increasing the number of housing units and expanding the types of housing available. The county is especially lacking smaller units for singles, seniors and students, as well as other multifamily housing options. One new category is small lot single family. The county is allowing smaller single family lot sizes with compact residences. The photo on the upper left shows an example of this housing type. Missing middle housing such as accessory dwelling units, townhouses, duplexes, condos and small apartment buildings, increased housing choices for the community at more affordable price points. Thoughtfully designed and at an appropriate scale, missing middle housing can blend into existing residential neighborhoods and contribute to neighborhood character. The photo on the upper right shows up small apartment building within a residential neighborhood. There's also a need for multifamily housing at various densities throughout the county, including apartments and condos. Pippin orchards on the lower right is a recent example of an affordable apartment project in Watsonville. And the photo on the lower left shows the Swan Lake Gardens condominium complex in live out an older housing development. Policies and regulations will also support higher density projects in areas near transit and urban services. The county establishes the allowable number of housing units per acre on residential land or residential density by designating land and urban areas as very low, low, medium and high density. Allowable density on each parcel is determined by the implementing zone district, which establishes the minimum land area required for units. Lower density ranges apply in rural areas, helping to preserve rural character and natural resource. The table on the slide only shows our urban designations, and we're not proposing any substantive changes to rural densities or rural development standards. Current density ranges for urban areas are very low compared with other communities currently topping out at 17.4 units per acre and urban high density. This discourages the construction of more affordable multifamily housing options such as apartments and smaller units and further constrains the potential for housing that meets community needs. In comparison, the city of Santa Cruz supports densities of 30 to 55 units per acre and high density zones. The county is proposing several changes to urban residential density to support infill development and multifamily housing. One change is to use the entire parcel area to determine allowable density called the gross site area, instead of first deducting unbuildable areas such as rights of way, known as net developable area. Using gross site area to calculate density will encourage urban development to achieve established densities provided in the general plan and simplify project review. As shown in this table in the green text, the sustainability update also simplifies and slightly expands the density range for urban very low, low and medium designations. However, since the actual density for these projects is established by the minimum land area required for dwelling in the zone district, this change would not increase allowable densities on existing parcels with these land use designations. The urban high residential designation would increase from 17.4 to 30 units per acre. This change would allow for the creation of new parcels in the existing RM 1.5 district, which allows up to 30 units per acre and the RM 2 zone district, which allows up to 22 units per acre. This provides a path for new multifamily residential development at a density that supports apartments and compact units. Existing general plan densities do not allow for the creation of new parcels in these districts. To address the missing higher density range for residential development, we will also be creating a new urban high flex land use designation and a corresponding new residential flexible or res flex zone district with densities up to 45 units per acre. The purpose of the new urban high flex land use designation and implementing res flex zone district is to support the development of compact units that are more affordable by design. The zone district is a tool that provides an efficient use of land, allowing more housing units to be provided within the limited land available in the urban area. Less land is required per unit and development standards encourage compact unit sizes that are generally more affordable. Res flex zone are appropriate near and along key corridors where transit and services are available located near major employers such as Dominican and near colleges including Cabrillo. The zone district provides a new higher density range of 22 to 45 units per acre. Based on recent multifamily housing projects in the county, we would anticipate that most market rate projects would be constructed at a density of around 22 to 26 units per acre. And projects with more than 26 units per acre would generally be provided by nonprofit affordable housing developers. The zone district will encourage 100% affordable projects at higher densities that would provide affordable housing so desperately needed in our community, as well as compact one bedroom and studio units appropriate for smaller households. Although the urban high flex land use designation and the RF zone district is new. The zone district reflects the development density of many existing apartment and condominium complexes and urban areas of the county on both small and large sites. These projects were constructed under previous zoning standards that facilitated multifamily housing. All of the examples on this slide are located in the county and fall within the urban res flex density range. Can you advance to the next slide please Stephanie. Although these multifamily residences were constructed in prior decades and do not follow the new design guidelines or proposed development standards. It is apparent from these examples that the housing at these densities can integrate well with the existing neighborhood fabric through design features appropriate massing and scale, and can include significant open space. From the exterior, it is in fact difficult to determine the density of any particular example. As you can now see a density ranges for these multifamily residences and condos range from 26 units to 38 units per acre, falling within the density range of the RM 1.5 zone district, and also the density of the new res flex zone district. To support more housing choices, the county is also revising residential development standards for higher intensity development. Key changes to development standards are shown in the table in green. For single family parcels, the minimum lot size has been reduced from 3500 to 2500 square feet to allow smaller single family lots with compact residences for future land divisions, providing for more efficient use of urban land. Updated development standards also facilitate development on smaller single family lots. Standards for the lower density residential multifamily or RM parcels are generally not changing. However, to support development of projects at the upper end of the RM density range from 11 to 29 units per acre. Revised standards allow for increases in floor air ratio or FAR, which regulates bulk and mass on a site and allow increases in lot coverage, which is the portion of the site that can be covered by structures. Three stories and 35 foot height limits would also be allowed for these higher density RM projects, which can allow for additional open space and landscaping and provide space for parking. While supporting multifamily housing at these higher densities, development standards continue to regulate mass and bulk, the standards also acting as a check on the average unit size to support reasonably sized units and discourage large luxury units. Residential parking standards are also being revised, which will be reviewed in detail at the next study session on June 22. The project also retains multifamily development standards, which provide for compatibility with the neighborhood context and single family neighborhoods. This includes maintaining existing 15 foot front yards, setbacks, and the existing interior side sets, setbacks. Open space requirements for residential multifamily districts have been clarified. Lowering the overall open space area required in some sites and including minimum dimensions for open space areas to ensure the areas are usable. For the new res flex, the district special standards are proposed to allow the higher intensity development necessary to support additional compact units. This includes heights up to 40 feet and three stories and reduced front yard setbacks and increased floor area ratio. Open space is required for best flex development with a minimum of 10% of the lot area devoted to open space, which may be public or private open space or a combination to provide design flexibility. Requiring open space as a percentage of the total site area, facilitates development on RF sites while continuing to provide needed open space for residents that ensures livability and quality design. Development standards in the county code along with chapter 1311 site development and design provide objective standards that work in conjunction with the new county design guidelines to ensure quality projects that are compatible with the surrounding context. The design guidelines apply within the USL and RSL to multifamily development of three or more units and to commercial and mixed use development. These guidelines provide best practices for the design of building and sites to ensure functional and attractive designs and provide for gathering places, active and attractive street front edges, quality open space and landscaping and green building and site design features. The guidelines provide a flexible approach allowing for creativity and diverse architectural styles that make design goals. The guidelines provide overarching guidance as well as guidance specific to different land uses, including multifamily development and mixed use, as well as commercial. As seen in the slide, the design guidelines includes diagrams of sites and building elevations and perspective drawings with photos illustrating these design concepts and various ways to meet the design objectives. Guidance for the design of multifamily sites ensures that multifamily projects respect the scale, style and character of the existing context. Parking is required to be located in the rear or middle of the site when feasible to maintain residential character and provide an attractive streetscape. Landscaping and trees are required within front setback areas contributing to the urban forest required open spaces encouraged within front setbacks contributing to neighborhood character. And projects and residential neighborhoods are encouraged to complement existing front yard depths. Special design guidance is provided for multifamily development, which includes res flex sites to ensure compatibility with adjacent sites. Recognizing that adjacent properties may include one and two story buildings, development standards require that 50% of any third story is set back an additional five feet from the required property setbacks. The design guidelines further help to reduce the appearance of hide and mask and provide additional privacy and transition to neighborhood properties. The guidelines encourage locating taller portions of the building in the center of sites include other design techniques such as tapering heights down to the property lines using pitched roof and changes in roof and wall heights is appropriate to the design style and surrounding context. Consistent with environmental justice goals, the same design principles apply to res flex sites as to other multifamily housing. Special guidance is provided for our sites where appropriate, such as techniques for building modulation guidance tailored to the street type such as housing along multimodal corridors and special recommendations for open space. For buildings, design principles are intended to maintain a human scale, varying while plans help to identify individual buildings and break up larger buildings. Design details such as very building materials balconies and awnings add further interest and character. Using these very design approaches, one can often not tell from the street how many dwellings are in a particular building, as each building can read as a single family dwelling. For example, the buildings in the top illustration on the right could be individual townhouses, or could include separate units on each floor. This is also true for the buildings in the photo on the top left. And the photo of the blue building on the lower left, it easily be larger single family dwelling, but in fact includes four separate units. Now we'll take a pause and provide time for questions and comments from your commission on the rest actual changes. Great, thank you both for that presentation so far. Appreciate it. A lot of information, what any commissioners like to start with some question some Q&A or discussion on these topics to start with. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for that.  Do we have members of the public here wanting to speak. Thank you. I think one thing that Miss Hansen mentioned was that we would. Well, let's talk about that we were talking about potentially getting members of public and sooner. And to do that later at the end. Yeah, we thought we would just since it's so much material take a break for any questions from the commission right now and then at the end open it up for public comment that that's how we had thought it might work. Okay, thank you. There's flexibility. I have a question. Maybe one sec here commissioner please let's just figure out this process really quick and then we'll move forward. I think then if we can try to minimize questions as a commission until we get to that point, you know, questions that are specific to this section. If that's appropriate and bills good for the rest of commissioners I'd, you know, say we can move forward with that. So you can get to the public comment portion sooner. That's fine with me I have a number of questions but it doesn't matter when. I don't, I don't agree. I mean, I would like to ask my question. This is a huge document. I'd rather ask my questions as she finishes each section. I'm happy either way just trying to get some input from everyone so you know we want to just dig in. I'm happy to do that I think a lot of our questions will inform the public but I also don't want them to have to sit around all day to give us their comments so well hopefully some of our questions will answer questions the public has. So, yeah please. Well I think commissioner Dan was probably first in line did you have any in particular. And no Renee is welcome to go first please. Okay, well I just have a general question. If this were a giant project, we would, you know I know that environmental review has been done but I have a very general question and I'll only ask it once through the whole process which is this. I think a lot of these housing changes are well constructed. Good idea and I think we should go ahead with them but I have to say, have we looked at how much water we have and how much congestion it's going to cost. Plus, at all because I had another experience of trying to go to South County yesterday and it took me an hour. So, we build, are we looking at what this will mean in terms of congestion and traffic and do we have the water resources to build out how we looked at what this can mean, if it was successful on. I have to ask that because it's the elephant in the room. So commissioner shepherd I'll take a first stab at that. The environmental impact report for the project, which will go into more in the study session on July 13. Let's look at all of the elements required by a sequel, including traffic and water and other public facilities as well as all the other elements. The EIR is a program EIR so it's looking at the big picture countywide, but it does make assumptions for how much growth could be accommodated in the 20 year planning horizon for the project. And it does find that there are some significant impacts, which we'll review in detail. And these certainly include water supply. We can talk a little bit more about that but the sustainability update is anticipating more intense development in the urban areas as we've been discussing and when we did our forecasting we found that amid this middle of the road approach resulted in more units than has been anticipated by ambags growth projections for the region and for the county. Now those projections are very low. The county has not been growing very much. In fact, we've, I don't have the numbers in front of me but in recent years we've been, we've had negative growth. And you know because when you review the growth goal we're talking about you know point 25% growth and for the next year or growth in residential units has been really low. So we do anticipate not only with this project, but also with all of the bills that the state legislature has been passing to try to increase housing, increase infill housing and streamline housing that at some point growth, if we can actually build some of the housing that we need for this community. We anticipate our growth will be a little closer to what we've proposed rather than ambag and ambag will have to adjust their projections to really look at the 33,000 units that the state has told us we have to have in the next year. So there's a little bit of a disconnect. And the reason why I bring that up in particular is because the EIR does look at water supply, the water districts do their own projections so that they can tell where they're going to have a shortfall in their supply. Those are based on ambags numbers. And so, as I said before, we don't think ambags numbers are really going to be realistic as new housing development takes place and communities try to meet the arena. So there is, because we do exceed the projections done by the water districts and their forecasting, we find that there could be a significant impact associated with development over time. However, we think that the water districts are have plans for addressing the sustainability of their water supplies, and they have multiple projects that are planned for over time to try to both conserve and increase storage, which leads to greater reliability and supply. So it's a little bit of a changing scenario, but the EIR does look at it in detail. Long explanation, I apologize for that. Well, I understand the explanation. It's a good explanation. But I almost think that since we passed the growth control measure all those years ago, we've never met the growth numbers that were allowed. So it's become a somewhat, I think it's an important piece of legislation, but it's somewhat irrelevant because we've never exceeded the number of allowable permit numbers ever. And yet, congestion and traffic from North County to South County and back, have gotten worse and worse. So I've never quite understood how supposedly we're not getting more people, but we're are getting more people. And that explains the housing crisis. Like we haven't built more, but there's a lot more people here. So this will mean more congestion. And I think, I think when these projects get proposed, the people in whose neighborhoods they're going to be in will bring up these two issues strongly and loudly. No one's going to say we don't need more housing. I mean, it's obvious we do. But I think the planning department and government as a whole is going to be said, how can we do this where will the water come from and what will it do to my trying to ever drive to South County and I think we need to start developing those answers as part of this whole process. Otherwise, it's not going to be very well received or even well implemented. You know, this all has to be coordinated. That's very fine for me to say I don't envy people trying to do it. But I think these questions need to be asked from the start. And I think we need to keep asking them and not just do this in a disjointed area unless this is a political strategy in our part. Um, I didn't address traffic very, very much. Sequa requires that we now look at vehicle miles traveled.  And I think when you talk about the increased congestion on the road. And in part that's because of some of the things that we've been talking about, which are the disconnect between our land uses and our transportation facilities. We're going to talk a lot more about transportation at the next meeting. There's a whole list of projects that are proposed. And over time, and we'll talk about some of the regional projects that are proposed that are also addressed in the EIR, but aren't particularly the county's projects. And that is all those projects and the work that a lot of work has been done with the public works department to or old public works department site of the of this new community development infrastructure department to really nail down what those projects are so that they can start appearing on the capital improvement program. So we will talk a lot more about that. I like to say that it's this isn't disjointed at all. We've, you know, we've taken a tremendous amount of time years, looking at how we marry these two land use and transportation things together. And we just are not talking a lot about transportation today. My last point is that every single development will have to address in an upcoming document and traffic study, what their particular impacts are in the neighborhood. It's required by existing codes. They need to look at delay at stoplights and make sure that they're not adding to the issues on the roadways and if they are they need to mitigate for those impacts. So, I won't pretend that we've, you know, that we've been able to look at the, you know, what this individual site does to to traffic in its immediate neighborhood because it's such a big program it's a 20 year growth plan. It's it's at a much higher level than that individual, the individual impacts will be looked at when new development is proposed, and there is no new development proposes a part of this project just to kind of throw that in there too. Can I jump in on this. Sorry, I wasn't planning to say anything but I had a number of comments based on the conversation. One, the first is that, you know, we can't really look at the county as a separate entity. The county hasn't really grown much in the last 30 years but Santa Cruz and Watsonville have grown quite a bit. That explains a lot of some of the impacts of on growth. The university has grown enormously, and we should also be sure to take into consideration that the university is planning to grow another 10,000 students. In the next 10 years, and that is does not include the faculty and other support staff that will be coming to town to support that growth in students so. So I think that we have to be able to look at that in order to understand we're not, you know, we're separate as far as governing goes but we're not separate as far as how we use the county and where we live and all that. Stephanie, you said something about the Rena numbers, and I wasn't quite sure you said that the state is asking the county to build to zone for 33,000 units. Is that right? Is that the whole region or just the county? That's for the region. Okay, thanks for the three county reading for indistinction because, you know, that's, yeah, in the region encompasses Santa Cruz County, the four cities, Monterey County, and San Bernardino just to make that clear. Yeah, correct. Okay. Okay, that's it. I'll save the rest for later. Great. Thank you so much. Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, any questions or comments at this time. We have one. And this has to do again with the infill and the state requirements that we concentrate on infill. In some of these identified parcels, how do we, well, if the if the main objective is to have consolidated living housing. And with having services around it within 15 minutes, some of these parcels would not qualify for those. Is that correct? I think the parcels that are, and we'll talk more about the zoning map changes and their residential flex parcels in latter part of this discussion. But there, there are services on those main corridors that begin, you know, it's a 20 year plan and these are policies right. It's not the 15 minute neighborhood is a is a vision and a goal. It's not necessarily a regulation where we don't allow the development, unless you have a grocery store within walking distance. This is the development framework over time. And so I think that's an important distinction of the policies, which are implementing a vision versus how we regulate an individual development on on a site. So if that, if that's helpful at all. Yeah, just, just if I can add to that, I think, you know, supporting like res flex, new res flex sites in areas near transit and services is one objective but I would say sort of overall goals and strategies to support a variety of housing choices. So I think it's a broader sort of vision. I think my biggest concern would be getting employment to these sites within, so that you don't create even a worse traffic situation. If these people, let's say they're already employed somewhere, maybe even South County. Then these the residential flex buildings in the infill would would very likely just be moving people from one location to that location and then they would have to go back to their employment. And that would be possibly by car or possibly by transit over time. So that's the purpose of having more intense development both residential and commercial by the way we haven't talked about commercial development yet. Over in in assimilated in kind of areas so we can begin to reduce some of that travel because we agree that's definitely, it's definitely an issue. I think it's important to note that people are driving and the fact that they're in their cars alone, driving from home to work is part of what we're trying to address here. Thank you. That's all I had. Thank you commissioner ladies and me. I had one specific question, but you know I have a lot to ask but I'll say most of them also. I have a particular list of me from this part of the presentation I really want to understand. And it goes on page 10 I believe of the report where it says something along the lines of only affordable housing developers will get densities over 45 units maker. And I just need I just want to understand that a little bit better because to me densities. If, if, well, let me start by just asking you to clarify that and then I want to maybe talk about a little bit more. Yeah, I'm happy to clarify yeah the the staff report was more trying to sort of explain like based on recent projects that we've received generally like most market rate projects are done at like 26 or units less per acre so it was more explaining that we don't expect to see, you know, higher densities with market rate projects but certainly anybody who any developer or property owner who wants to provide additional affordable units on their property. And certainly, you know, do so according to our density bonus standards and, you know, if they provide the number of additional units they can qualify for that density bonus and request, you know, concessions to our development standards as well. So you're, you're saying, thank you for that. I just want to sum it up amount or just make sure I really get that affordable housing developers who use the density bonus or other developers wouldn't that really what it kind of boils down to. Go ahead Stephanie.  Oh, I any any developer, I think we do have some market rate projects where people do, you know, not a nonprofit developer of an average developer may say I want to, you know, I want a couple additional units and I may, you know, I may, instead of qualifying, you know, in our current instead of qualifying for 17.4 maybe about qualify for 22 units, you know, provide 22 units per acre and then, you know, request waivers so certainly they can apply and we do see those just in terms of the, you know, getting up more than 26 units per acre at that level what based on what we've seen in the past, those are generally done by nonprofit developers and if that helps clarify. Yes, understood. I would, I have a couple of opinions on that, just because it's kind of my line of work also right from the client side or the other side of it. No, just to clarify here, make sure we're really clear. There's no restriction, right, you don't have to be an affordable housing developer. What we're trying to portray here is that we'll probably see things in the big range. And typically, you know, most folks who are interested in market rate units will come in probably at a lower density but still have options. Right, so it's a wide wide range of possibility. Okay, I guess where my, my, it's coming down to is like the idea of 60 units an acre was there but then it was reduced because it didn't feel like people would use it. And that to me has a big red flag on it because it sounds more like that we are creating a policy that doesn't actually financially work for non affordable housing developers. I don't regret that because we're saying we could do more, but we're not going to because we, you know, we don't think people use it only affordable housing developers that you say density bonus and get funding from the state will want to build at these densities and I would say that it's kind of the office that at least that's what what I'm trying to understand is how if you didn't, if you made it denser, don't you think more people would develop at those densities. So we really decide to go from that 60 to that 45. I didn't have something to do with the height restriction, because then you'd have to make the units so small that that people in the market rate category wouldn't want to buy that I mean it's all comes down to economics and supply and demand. I had the same question Tim when I read that had to read it a few times to understand what stop was saying but, and then it made me think of that project on Rodriguez that was a lower density than they could have built but in my view that was because the developer wanted to sell at a certain price point. That's why the density was lower so I think that what I understood staff to be saying was, this has just been the pattern, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the reality going forward I think you're just trying to soften the density below I guess for the the intention wasn't you know that only nonprofit developers can apply for the higher density at all the the idea was more that if people want to construct like more than 44 units per acre at that point, we would like to see more affordable units in that project so if you want to go above that then you know you're you are going to need to provide that some of those units are affordable beyond what's normally required so it was more a sort of way to really try and encourage more affordable units in these higher density projects basically. Yeah, just to clarify a little on that we. We did, we did lower the density in the RF, and that was because we wanted to continue to encourage developers to use the density bonus when provide more affordable units in these developments. And one I kind of cut the cut that program off by letting them just do it so it's a little bit of a balancing act, and I would also say the other balancing act is, you know, I think affordable housing developers with would really encourage us to go higher, but we're also trying to promote an approach that integrates well into the community. So it's a little bit we think we're hoping we've kind of struck the right balance here, you know, because we have people on both sides saying, you can't build 45 units per acre here and we also have affordable housing developers saying you really need to go higher so it's definitely a balancing act for this community. Okay that's all great feedback thank you all I appreciate that. One just follow up question on that I'm sure I'll have more discussion on this but is there any adjustment to what a required affordable housing component is for non state density bonus projects. I believe right now that there's not an affordability component to rental projects is that the case. No required affordability component. If you get into it that's fine too just, you know, sometimes those two things are married so you get more people to use the density bonus if you already require some form of affordable housing as a base line right so then people know they already have to do the affordable housing so then they'll use the state density bonus and you'll get more units out of it, but if we don't have any kind of required affordable housing component. That affordable housing unless people use the state density bonus because why did they need to. We have affordable housing requirements as well it's just that if you're a lower intense development you can do a fee in lieu of so you can I think it's seven units you could pay a fee. And above that you have to start incorporating affordable units. And that's true on for sale and for rent projects. Well, as I might know might have something to add here but there are requirements for for both better county requirements. Great. Yeah, if I was going to add anything I would probably defer to Suzanne in a housing section who's really the expert on all of the issues on affordability. I tend to look at it on a more project by project basis. So it's hard to make generalized statements. Yeah, absolutely. And I do want to preface that a lot of the questions that I have in particular probably fairly technical for a conversation like this and so I might you know at follow up with the data that has, you know, a little bit more specific details so that, you know, depending on the spot to dig through the code right now and all that kind of stuff we can just kind of talk about it generally and then I can follow up. Yeah, and staff is happy to answer any questions and provide more information at a later meeting. I would say that are affordable housing requirements are in place, and we are, we are not proposing changes to those or density bonus, because they're already in place. So, we can provide more information on what those are exactly. If that be helpful. So, thank you so much. I appreciate that. Alright, that's the only topic I had so anyone else has anything. So we can move on. Are we moving on with the presentation. Sorry, yes, let's please move on to the next part of the presentation. Great, thank you. Thank you commissioners then we will move on to commercial and mixed use development. For commercial and industrial development, the policies and regulations in the sustainability update encourage vibrant activity centers within focus growth areas. Stephanie, are you sharing your screen or thought I was sharing. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We see it now. Okay, yeah, thank you. So some activity centers may be focused on employment or school such as Cabrillo College or the Soquel Drive Medical Center area. Other activity centers may be focused on community gathering or shopping and entertainment, such as lower 41st Avenue and Portola Drive and pleasure point. Other activity centers prioritize ground floor, commercial focused businesses such as restaurants and retail, paired with office and residential land uses so that workers and residents and walk to local businesses. The sustainability update also seeks to address the jobs housing imbalance, whereby many people who can afford to live in the county continue to commute over the hill. The policies allowing for more modern flexible office development and enable the construction of buildings for high paying job growth sectors such as health care and innovation and tech. The policy the project also recognizes that there is less demand for brick and mortar retail, given the increase in e-commerce over the past decades. Also in retail development and even many mixed use developments under current standards are not generally financially feasible in today's market. Given this reality, policies in the sustainability update allow for more flexibility in mixed use development policies also encourage visitor accommodations such as hotels and motels within activity centers with varied price points. Overall, the non residential policies in the general plan aim to increase economic vitality for Santa Cruz County and these policies align with the county's economic vitality study, which was adopted in 2014. Now let's take a closer look at the new workplace flex zone district. The standards for this district are similar to other commercial districts, except that the overall building height may be 50 feet rather than 40 feet. And a first story floor to ceiling height of at least 15 feet is required. The purpose of these regulations is to allow for maximum commercial flexibility and various uses inside the building. The conceptual site plan for workplace flex development is shown on the slide, along with images of what interior spaces and streetscape design might look like. These new workplaces come a kind of accommodated mix of office light industrial and retail uses for large businesses, such as a tech company that includes both office and research and development or these buildings could house groups of small businesses, such as the repurposed sash mill in the city of Santa Cruz. Chapter six of the new county design guidelines is focused on a workplace flex and provides best practices for building, citing design and massing. One of the most changed commercial regulations in the county code is the introduction of special standards and guidelines for mixed use residential and commercial development, which include both vertical mixed use where residential units are incorporated into the same building with commercial development, usually with ground floor commercial and horizontal mixed use where residential units are located in a separate building. And example projects are shown from the design guidelines for both vertical and horizontal mixed use. As you can see, mixed use projects come in all shapes and sizes. The existing county code does not provide special standards for mixed use developments currently. And as a result, commercial standards are applied, which are not always appropriate for residential units. These standards have been added for density, open space, and setbacks for mixed use that are appropriate for this context. This includes increasing allowed maximum density from 17.4 to 45 filling in as per acre is provided for the res flex district. The residential allowance would also increase from 50 to 75% of the building square footage to reflect the increased demand for commercial development and an increased need for housing. Excuse me to reflect the decreased demand for commercial development and the increased need for housing will continually to ensure land is available for commercial use. Using a percentage approach is also appropriate where commercial and residential uses are provided in separate buildings. The code also clarifies the density bonus provisions apply on mixed use sites in accordance with state law. These standards work together with chapter five of the design guidelines, which focus on mixed use development with considerations for site and building design and appropriate transition to residential neighborhoods. The sustainability update also includes new regulations for hospitals and medical mixed use developments, reflecting the unique needs of these development types, and the county's goal of maintaining and further developing a healthcare employment center along the Soquel Drive corridor in Liberl. These projects should be located on large sites in areas where a concentration of medical services and commercial activity is planned. They should also combine the development of hospitals, medical offices and clinics along with complimentary land uses such as retail, restaurants and commercial services, as well as various types of high density housing. Medical mixed use standards include a maximum height of 60 feet and four stories rather than the usual three stories for other non residential uses in order to accommodate hospital programming elevators and mechanical equipment. Large lot coverage is higher than what is usually allowed in the public facilities district to accommodate buildings and parking garages. These sites would also be eligible for density bonus with the provision of additional affordable units beyond what is already required. Additional updates to allow land uses development standards and guidelines in commercial and industrial districts aligned with modern practice and state laws and further implement the policy goals in the general plan. In order to facilitate appropriate neighborhood commercial development, smaller commercial, commercial parcels are allowed to provide greater flexibility for neighborhood and community commercial sites. Setbacks for commercial buildings adjacent to residential and non commercial agricultural properties are slightly reduced. However, a new setback applies to any third story requiring that a minimum of 50% of the third floor exterior walls be set back an additional 10 feet from property setback lines. This additional setback ensures that buildings maintaining human scale reduces bulk and mass and alleviates potential privacy and shadow impacts neighbors. In order to facilitate vibrant activity centers and commercial quarters, the code amendments include reductions in use permit requirements for small businesses, as well as requiring active commercial uses such as retail restaurants and ground floors along multimodal quarters and main streets. Also the overall building height in commercial zone districts, other than workplace flex has been increased from 35 to 40 feet to accommodate more spacious ground floors. These streetscape standards and guidelines have been added to encourage the creation and maintenance of streetscape amenities. Appendix A of the county design guidelines provides streetscape guidelines for each major corridor type. A main street illustration from that appendix is provided on this slide and more details regarding these guidelines will be provided at the later study session in June. The new facility update also establishes a new FAR of 1.0 for commercial, visitor, office and industrial land use designations as a measure of building intensity. The new FAR standard responds to state law which requires local governments to establish standards of population density and building intensity for each land use designation. The floor area ratio of one is sufficient to accommodate allowed commercial uses while providing sufficient area for parking in accordance with reduced parking ratios provided in the sustainability update. And we'll be reviewing parking standards at the June 20th study session. For industrial zone districts, industrial zone districts, new uses have been added, including wet labs and dry labs and cooperative maker spaces. Building heights have been increased to 40 feet to match commercial standards. And finally, commercial and land use uses and definitions have been updated and modernized. For reference, this table summarizes the key changes to commercial development standards. This is just provided for reference. These changes have been reviewed on the previous slide. So now before we're moving on to map amendments. If your commission likes, we can take a pause here to discuss any questions and comments regarding commercial mixed use and industrial development. Thank you so much. I know I had one specific question regarding this section, other commissioners. I don't, I prefer to just keep going through. Okay. In this case, I agree. Okay. I will wait until after the, the public has made their input. Great. Thank you so much. I can save my question also though it's kind of specific and might get us into some conversation. So I'll push off till later. So please continue with the presentation. Thank you. Thank you then I will turn the presentation back over to Stephanie. Okay, so now we wanted to take a little time to review the map amendments that are included in the project. The sustainability update includes some general plan land use map and zoning map amendments to 23 selected parcels throughout the county. There are two types of land use changes. The first type of amendments are to eliminate inconsistencies between general plan maps and the zoning maps or established land use uses on 13 parcels throughout the county. The county is required by state law to ensure consistency between the general plan land use designations and the zoning map. No intensification of land uses is proposed as a result of these corrections. The second type of land of map changes include the targeted rezoning so long transportation corridors to implement the sustainable framework and introduce the new urban high flex and residential flex land use designation into the community. The first of the map amendments can be found on what's included. And they're also attached to staff report. So first we're going to review the map consistency changes the aerials on this slide show eight parcels in the mid county area that are proposed for correction. There are two parcels on Bromer that have residential care and they'll change to multifamily zoning consistent with their land use two parcels on so Cal San Jose road that will change to public facilities. That's the cemetery up there. Two parcels on Laurel Glen Road that are partially zone commercial will have their general plan designations and zoning cleaned up to recognize their rural agricultural and residential land uses. And two parcels on Glenhaven Road will also have their general plan designations amended to match their zoning and their designated agricultural soils. These maps show changes in North County there's one in Davenport and then four in South County. The parcel in Davenport shown on the left will change from residential zoning to match its existing commercial land use so it will change to commercial zoning in South County. One parcel in the Selva Beach area less Selva Beach area will change from public facilities to residential to match its existing land use to. Sorry, something happened to my slides. The parcels along Freedom Boulevard will with existing electrical and social club facilities will change from agricultural to public facilities to match those existing land uses. And a portion of one parcel up on Hames Road where there's an active winery will change from commercial ag to just commercial zoning to match its general plan designation. There's no agricultural soils on that part of the parcel that one's shown in yellow at the top of the slide. And no, I should say no intensification of land use is expected on those map changes that I reviewed. 10 parcels have been identified for rezoning to the new residential flex zone district along major transportation routes, namely so Cal. Drive and Portola Drive rezoning these properties begins to implement the new RF district to support development of new housing options and to encourage sustainable development pattern. No development itself is proposed as part of the sustainability update project. The map on the left shows the property at Thurber Lane and so Cal drive. This, this property is currently zoned for neighborhood commercial and professional administrative offices. The amendments proposed would be a mix of residential and commercial uses to support the medical uses within the so Cal drive corridor. The southern portion of the site would be for residential flex to accommodate workforce housing while the southern portion would be rezone to community commercial, which can accommodate neighborhoods serving uses such as offices, restaurants and visitor accommodations such as hotels. The map on the right shows nine parcels located along Portola Drive that are now primarily zoned for a variety of commercial uses. The rights would be rezone to residential flex to facilitate a transition to a mix of multifamily and residential units interspersed with neighborhood commercial consistent with the vision for the western portion of the corridor in the pleasure point vision and design principles. Here as we work to try to meet our Rena and update our housing element will be using the residential flex tool and zoning district in more areas to help accommodate our housing needs. In addition to the residential flex development standards that we already reviewed special design principles applied to the development on sites within the pleasure point corridor. This is a place of the regular multifamily design guidelines that are also in document. These design principles are taken from the pleasure point corridor study, and they're provided as appendix B of the design guidelines. The development fits within the community vision for the corridor, which was described in part as a place characterized by buildings with the varied architectural styles and sizes, compatible with local character, interesting open spaces and with attainable workforce housing. Recognizing the eclectic architectural character and beach aesthetic that these design principles require the incorporation of natural materials. On the side of Portola Drive, new development would continue to provide views of the mountains to the north to minimize the appearance of building mass and maintain a human scale. Building frontages must be articulated three third stories. A long portola must be stepped back from the lower floors. Parking would be required to be located to the rear of the site when feasible. So it's not fronting on Portola Drive. The appearance of building height, taller massing would be located in the center of a parcel. New development adjacent to residential properties must provide appropriate transitions and privacy and maintain the village feel of pleasure point. New development would be required to provide a 20 foot rear setback to residential parcels rather than the 15 foot setback that's in the residential flex standards. An additional five foot setback is required for any third floor adjacent to a residential site. This translates to a 10 foot side setback from any third story abutting a residential property and a 25 foot rear setback for a third story abutting a residential property. The design guidelines works with chapter 1311 in the Santa Cruz County Code to require landscaping to create a shaded and inviting pedestrian experience, including a minimum of one tree for every 50 feet of linear footage in the residential projects, and incorporates sustainable development features in building and site design such as solar energy and rainwater cisterns. We wanted to just take a moment to review public outreach again that's done for this project. Public outreach has been done extensively across a variety of planning efforts that have led up to, to the sustainability update. In particular, the visioning meetings done for the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan, which was accepted by the board back in 2014. The pleasure point guideline principles were also developed with input from local residents, the community workshops and ultimately incorporated into that vision and designing guide principles in 2018. Public outreach efforts for the current sustainable update documents has also been extensive, especially since the draft documents were released in February. Newspaper ads and social media campaign, as well as email blasts continue to inform the public about the project. County launch launch the website in 2020 which now includes all the draft documents documents are linked in your staff report as exhibit a project website also provides summaries and fact sheets available in English and Spanish, a detailed summary of relevant topics in today's presentation. The public has a variety of ways that they can provide comments on the documents, several comments have been submitted via the public comment portal available on the website as well as by email and a survey also provides additional opportunities for input. Earlier this spring, staff held a series of six community meetings were organized by topic recordings of these meetings are available on the project website. We have presented study sessions with the Agricultural Policy Advisory Committee, Housing Advisory Commission and the Latino Affairs Commission comments and feedback from these meetings are included in your packet as exhibits D E F and G. Today's staff report also provides a summary of the feedback and we'll say a lot of the comments are about residential flex and reason why we want to review this is because there's a lot of comments in the packet. And even though we were concerned or the Commission was concerned that there was not a lot of public who showed up at your last meeting, just wanted to review that the invitation and the tools for commenting on the project have been available, and we've made many efforts to do outreach. And there's a lot of comments that are provided in the, in the packets. One note, I just want to let you know that my boss sent out a newsletter highlighting the sustainability plan and, you know, he can monitor how many clicks it got and they were over 40 clicks. So, it looks like people are reading well at least taking a look at the plan, maybe not commenting, but that doesn't mean folks are engaging in some form. So I just want to let you guys know that. Thank you for that. Looking ahead, we'll have two more study sessions with the Commission. The next one is on June 22 and we'll focus on transportation parks and public facilities. And the final study session will be on July 13 to review updates related to the code modernization project, agriculture and natural resources will also review the draft EIR at that meeting. Following the two study session staff will return to the planning commission in August for public hearings and a recommendation. So with that, we'll end our presentation today with the recommended action, which is to conduct a study session on the sustainability update focused on the built environment including amendments to the general plan county code design principles and guidelines and amendments to the land use and zoning maps that concludes our presentation for today. Thank you very much and we're available for any questions. I have a quick question just on meeting schedule and process. I understand we have it looks like at least on the calendar we have another meeting in August, August 10. And I wonder if that could be a placeholder for, I don't know, any other lingering issues that the Commission might have. I just wanted to plant that seed and no decisions need to be made now but maybe commissioners can think about that. And that can be something that we can talk about at our next meeting. I was going to suggest something very similar. There's so much information to get through here and there's going to be follow up and it'd be really nice to have another opportunity, especially on this topic that's like kind of a big bulk of what this is to be able to follow up so I appreciate that. We can take a minute and ask any follow up questions really quickly here or can we can move on to public comment and and help to get that done here before our 1130 lunch break. That would be my preference but I'd love to hear the other commissioners if that's acceptable. Yes, great. Okay, why don't we do that let's move to open the public comment at this time and members of the public love three minutes to speak on this topic. And it's just do we have any members of the public I'd like to speak at this time. Yes, we do. I'm seeing two hands raised at the moment and I just want to remind everybody before we start that if you wish to speak on this item will have any questions. You can raise your hand by selecting the hand icon on the zoom link, or if you're calling in by telephone, you raise your hand by pressing star nine on the phone dial pad. So with that said, the first person is Patricia Brady. And I have you. Good morning. Good morning Patty. I'd like to ask a couple specific questions and then make a brief comment. We keep hearing the word 33,000 homes needed. And today it was clarified that it was for Monterey County San Benito County Santa Cruz County. I'd really appreciate the number that's truly needed for Santa Cruz what is that mandate. Also, the infrastructure needs that are discussed water services transportation are issues that are relevant right now. And then Patricia point has sent an opinion paper to many county leadership, most of you that are on this webinar today. Regarding the fact that we do not support urban residential flex high density for Portella Drive. We do support urban residential. We do have approximately 100 housing units, but we feel that pleasure points infrastructure is already tired, and this will overtax it. We also sent you an addition to our opinion paper, an eight question survey results that 98 members in four days answer the questions so you see, not only the responses to our questions but also their individual comments. Water services are really critical transportation really doesn't happen in this county at this point. The last bus is 630 maybe another one at 930. There's no end to end in this community. And we when we keep talking about over time, a 20 year period means that these issues will just become more drastic. So I really think that in some ways, the priorities need to flop that we resolve some of these infrastructure issues before we move ahead with such as high super high density, which again, we do not oppose growth we do not oppose development, but we do oppose 45 units per acre, in addition to density bonuses which are really minimized in these discussions. Also, I'd like to point out that in lieu fees were paid by most developers versus in incorporating low income or modified income into their housing projects. If we're going to have density bonuses that should be mandatory that they do this. Thank you for your comments. Thank you for your time. To our community. Thank you Patty. All right, so the next person we have is Alex Vaughton Alex you can now speak. Hello. Hi. Hi, I just want to, again, thank you for the time to comment publicly. I've taken a pretty close look of all the documents. I'll start by saying I'm both a resident and also a commercial property owner and small time developer in the pleasure point live oak area. I have two properties on Portola Drive, one of which I live on so I'm very sensitive to a lot of the infrastructure and especially traffic and livability issues, but as also a millennial and first time homeowner. You know I do have some comments on the residential and commercial. I will try and give just a high level and leave the rest for some extensive written comments that I'm preparing but I think would like to start with I think some of the height and the in the floor area ratio constraints and standards are too low on some of the proposed residential multi family. I do think that the, the RF density is, is plenty, especially considering the prospects for density bonus. I think I'm looking at the different jurisdictions, San Luis Obispo. The floor area ratio of 2.0. I'm in Fresno visiting my family and the residential multi family it's 1.5 2.0 for higher density. I think the increases are just sort of dramatically low and surprising. And I do think at this point, there does need to be some sense and recognition to really to not surprise the public that the state density bonus laws really extremely powerful and some of these limitations including on height and even floor area ratio. Some of these new state laws are very easily, I guess, and with strong legal protections developers and planning departments are allowed to set those limits aside. In addition, the commercial development, I'm actually a little more concerned about commercial standards, given the very a small amount of land and importance to economic development about some of the height and floor area ratios. I also think they're too low and commercial, if you're doing 100% commercial, you do lack the prospect of the density bonus so floor area ratio of 1.0 is just really, really dramatically low and should be significantly higher. I'll leave it at that for now. Thank you, Alex. Next up we have Betsy Anderson at Betsy you're able to talk. Please unmute yourself. Okay, okay. Thank you so much. I just wanted to make a comment about the images shared while I know that this is a long term plan. What I noticed was a significant lack of images that show really what it will look like with parking and with people's cars. So the photos and images have a charming feel. And I think that's probably what develop what we're looking for in this change of character to the neighborhood for this necessary development. I think it would be really important for all of us to be able to see what it really looks like when we have potentially up to 40, let's say 30 units that all have cars that need a place to park and sometimes multiple cars as well. So that's my comment for now. And thank you so much for hosting these informative meetings. Much appreciated. Thank you Betsy. I'm not seeing any hands raised at this time so if you do wish to speak, please raise your hand by hitting the star, the icon on your hand icon or star nine on your phone. I have Jeanine. Jeanine. Hello, good morning. Hello there. My name is Jeanine and I want to thank you first of all for the presentation and the review of what is a lot a lot of materials so thank you for for this presentation. I do like the general direction of the urban residential flex designation and that you're recognizing the need for all sorts of missing middle infill housing. I'm going to keep my comments general at this time, leave more specifics for written comment but generally I wanted to say that I recently heard the county's chief administrative officer describe the unincorporated county as the equivalent of a city, given that there's a population of 140,000 people. And then listening to the presentation and reading the materials I'm wondering if you're considering the significance of this number and being ambitious enough, especially when it comes to some of the things that have come up multiple times like density and height, especially along the significant corridors, I'll notice, I'll note that the height increases by a mere five feet along the corridors. I also just want to say it's Stephanie's explanation about the limited population growth of the county was really confusing. When I look at your progress in the fifth cycle of Rena, the county is woefully behind in developing housing, and I know that the population growth is limited limits some of the permit allocations as well. So the county has some catching up to do when it comes to having sufficient housing already, and especially as has been discussed affordable housing and attainable housing. And then a minor point and bag is really only Santa Cruz and Monterey counties it doesn't include San Benito, but thanks again for what is a really comprehensive set of materials, and I'll leave as I say my comments at this high level. Thanks again. Do we have anybody else who would like to speak at this time. Hit the, hit the hand icon at the bottom of your screen or star nine on your telephone if you'd like to speak. We have Henry Hooker. Hi, good morning Henry. Good morning. Can you hear me. We can hear you. I just have a few comments there seems to be an underlying assumption that market rate housing is luxury housing. And that's bad housing, because what we need is affordable housing. The problem here is that we need all of the above. To the extent that we limit market rate housing. We encourage those seeking market rate housing to purchase or rent the existing housing stock, which is exactly what's happening throughout the county at this moment because we're not focusing on building housing everybody says well we want to have affordable housing, but not market rate housing. I simply echo what others have said which is that the increased densities that are proposed are really insufficient to the needs of what we have, and it was effectively the available land. And it really makes less possible. The notion of the walkable neighborhood. Density is a good thing in that sense. And I think that you all know that, but you're just reaching for too little. And it's curious that one of your slides shows the senior apartment center in Santa Clara, which it says is 58 units per acre. It looks great. And I think that, you know, a lot of this just has to do with perception and the notion that 60 units per acre is much worse than 45 units per acre. It's not necessarily true and as planners, I think you know that FAR and units per acre and those measures are kind of rough tools and that there are actually better tools that are becoming in vogue form based zoning that really allow you to target what you want the neighborhood to look like, rather than these other things that really don't work so well and it's surprising to me that in this most recent take on the sustainability thing that you haven't incorporated any of those measures. Anyway, it's a great effort and I realize that you're definitely going in the right direction. And I'm very supportive of it and I just wish that you would do more. Thanks very much. Ms. Jess, you're muted. Sorry about that. I'm not seeing anybody else at this time who wishes to speak. Anyone would like to speak to raise your hand hit the hand icon or star nine on your phone. It looks as if everybody who had a question or who wanted to speak on this item is already spoken so I'll turn that back to you check on. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And thank you to the public for those comments really appreciate them I appreciate everyone's feedback and you know this is opportunity to provide that and so thank you for showing up and and and saying what she said. We can close the public comment at this time and it's normally when we bring it back for discussion and now we're all ready to go. We do have a required lunch break around 1130 which we could take now and then jump into discussion after if that's alright with the commission I would suggest that and just want to get everyone's take on it that would work. I'm open to what others want to do. I'd actually prefer to just keep going if that's okay with everybody else but happy to take a break. I have to leave it noon today so I would obviously prefer to keep going we've got 45 minutes hopefully we can get all our comments done by then I know certainly I can. I know Tim you have a lot to say 45 minutes is a long time. We could work till then I believe that the CTV requirement for a lunch break and so just requested to make sure we provided on the longer hearings and so I think we need to make that happen. However, the timing of it it could be pushed a little bit. I think we've traditionally taken a lunch break for the planning commission 12 anyway so. And then. And we usually have taken an hour or a half an hour we have a big agenda so I think if we keep going to noon, that would be the expectation that I think most people probably have anyway. I think that that works and CTV or Miss Jess could correct me if I'm wrong there as to how long we can go before we need a lunch break for it. Yeah I'm just checking with CTV that they're okay with holding off until noon to take a break I'll let you know as soon as I hear back. Why don't we just get started and then just feel free to interrupt interrupt us miss Jess when we have that information. And if they're able to work through that's a possibility I think we'd all be open to that. I'm not sure the regulations there so I appreciate you digging into that. Okay great well then let's get started on some discussion and further questions which Commissioner would like to get started. Well if you don't mind since I'm going to have to leave at noon. I don't have a lot to say I want to say. The main thing I want to say is to thank staff in this incredible document and a huge amount of work and careful thought that was going into it I'm really impressed. Period I don't want to have no other adjectives to say except that it's really a very good work. And I understand the necessity for all of it and I think the changes suggested in this particular area makes sense to me, and I support them long and short of it. Good. That was short and sweet. Wonderful. Thank you Commissioner shepherd. I can go next. That's okay. Keep them brief. So I agree with everything Commissioner shepherd said what I said last time it's an incredible amount of work on into this. So I wanted to start with some questions about FAR and open space and I know I touched on this last time too. So on the photos, I do find the photos in the presentation really helpful and we don't have those in the staff reports or when I'm reading about, you know, the changes to the open space requirements I'm trying to visualize well what does that look like in terms of a project. It's really helpful to have those photos in the PowerPoint. One of the things that that I'm trying to wrap my head around is, is I understand we're requiring. We have an open space requirement for the new RF zone zone district. So but what I'm what I guess I would like more examples of in the future are is to show to show me how that could work built out in what kind of open space that would look like if that makes sense. And I understand that it can be flexible like personal open space versus communal open space. It's really helpful for me like I can visualize okay and acre is you know this much square feet and so that would be this much square footage of open space. But if there's some examples out there visually, or or in our county that we have. That would be helpful. I'll keep touching on that every single time. And then I had a couple questions specifically from the staff report. Oh, okay, right. So, on page nine, talking about net developable area. We are changing this is a something that is a relatively significant change and what we're, what we're doing. Just talk me through what was, you know, the intent of excluding certain undevelopable areas for to get the net developable area for a parcel and then walk me through why we're making that change now. So like what was the original 10 intent, and then what's the basis for the change that makes sense. Yeah I think so I. I think any is probably better situated to address the original intent I would say big picture. We're in a big shift here right from kind of limiting or controlling development to recognizing that we need to change to accommodate people in our community, and all the things that we've been talking about so big big picture that way and then that any can help us with some more detail.  And I think the reason for doing it. It, it basically like we're not proposing to change, you know that the densities in general of like RM zone districts because it is defined by the zone district which establishes the minimum site area per dwelling but this is sort of a way to enable like a large multifamily site where, you know, let's say a portion of the slide is on has 30% slopes or something then that can be included in the overall development area so it may on some, especially larger to multifamily sites in the urban areas it may allow for some additional units without actually changing the rezoning parcels so that's kind of the intent of it and the intent is also to, you know, even though we would it be included in the overall density calculations for the site we would still continue to apply existing protections such as not developing repairing quarters we continue to protect those areas that would just on some sites allow for additional units to be constructed. So, and I guess this can maybe doesn't need to be answered now but just to be thinking it through for the future, and I don't know how many sites, like this exists. But if you had an acre site and 70% of it was on a 30% slope, you would still be able to count that 70% for what the 30% will be the developable area. I think that there are probably situations that need a little bit more nuance. Right, so, I guess I'm thinking about it in that way but I do appreciate that we're at least limiting the development on slopes, I think that there's a lot of reasons not to do that and for safety and all sorts of things. But that's just something to think about going forward. Quickly, quickly, I'm just going to jump in here I did hear back from CTV and they're okay with going till 12. Awesome. Thank you, TV. And then I actually had a similar question about on page 11 about the density bonus that that Tim brought up and. So I think you answered that so thank you very much. So, okay, then there was another part in here that I have a question on again about open space where it says open space requirements for multifamily arm districts have been clarified, requiring both private and public open space, lowering the overall open space area required on some sites. So I guess at some point I'd like a little bit more explanation about what that really means in reality I am. I am not opposed to the RF zone and I support higher densities. I think open space and design are going to be critical, even more critical the higher densities you go up, and it can be done. So I think that's an excellent designs at high density in fact, someone from Tim's group. So it can be done so but I think these things are critical and to make the units desirable open spaces is also has to be part of that mix. So I'll go through here. Okay, I did have a question on page 12 to about SB 478, which says applies to parcels in the county within census designated places and zone districts that allow multifamily housing or mixed use development. It doesn't have to be now but it would be great to have a map of where those places are in one of the next study sessions. And then I had some other there was, I'm sorry here I should have gotten my questions more organized like I sometimes do. I had some some questions on exhibit B. You know some of them are related to topics we're going to get to later. So I wasn't sure if I should talk about them now except I am actually going to be missing the study session on ag uses so I think I do want to just quickly go through them. On page 41 when we talk about agricultural service establishments. Can we have a definition of that. And maybe that is already defined somewhere that I haven't read yet in the voluminous materials. But that would be helpful to know exactly what we're talking about there. On page 43, the temporary events and weddings section. This is a big one. And I think we'll have a lot of interest in the third paragraph under temporary events and weddings. Talking about standards and limitations for commercial weddings. Do we want to also broaden that to events. When we're I mean that's one of the questions I had are we talking specifically only for weddings or are we, you know, including other commercial party type events be like, you know, bar mitzvah or whatever. It might be helpful just to clarify that. And then I won't go into the specifics yet here but I think there are probably some things that I'd like changed in going forward in the future will specifically I'll just mention the notification to adjacent properties I think will need to be greater than 500 feet. And maybe another rubric would be more appropriate than than a feat, because a lot of these aren't rule areas where parcels are far apart and 500 feet might not even capture the next house over but knowing this was a big issue in our district. And I think there are some slides in here actually. So the situation I'm thinking of the adjacent property owners were a lot farther that were impacted by the commercial weddings were a lot farther away than 500 feet. I'm almost done. Okay, and then on page 47 of exhibit B. Now we're talking about procedure. And this is all new and it's very exciting and I'm bringing this up now because again I'm going to miss the study session where we're going to dig into this where we're talking about zoning clearance. Who's going to be doing the review what's what would be the equivalent of that to our process now that would be helpful for me to know. And then also is the zoning clearance. Is that appealable or is that just the appealable elements start at the minor use or site development permit, which is a cool event to our level three. Okay, I think that that's it. Oh wait one more. Nope, that's it. Thank you very much. And thank you so much for all your work. I'm, you guys have put so much work into this I'm trying my best to keep up. Thank you. Chairman Gordon. Yes, please. Could I say one more thing. Yes. My comment was specifically about the general plan about the built environment that we've just reviewed. But I had quite a few. I guess I missed the fact that we are. We're going to get into today that kind of code amendments is that something we're going to be coming up next week. Next session. It's session on July 13. Okay good because like Commissioner Dan I, I have a lot of issues to discuss there and I just want, and then I had to step out of the room from and I heard she was bringing up a few things so good. Thank you. Renee, I'm actually going to miss that study. Oh, I was trying to sneak in my, oh, some of my questions. Okay, that that'll, that's very specific stuff. And I think we'll all have comments. They are nice certainly have some. Okay, just clarification. Thank you very much. Yeah. So the, where we go over a specific code changes, that's going to be on the 13, because I had a lot of questions there too so I'm going to push a lot of those off till that date. Just to be really clear. If I can just add a comment. Today's study session did include part of focus on certain code amendments, such as, you know, development standards for residential and commercial districts so I think it's probably appropriate to discuss us here but at the later study session this month we will be talking about code modernization and, and sort of the review processes and you know site development permits that sort of thing so we'll be, you know, you can also ask questions there as well but part of today's session did include those development standards. And let me just say I really appreciate that it's, it's, you know, I appreciated that so and I appreciate that you allowed me to ask these questions early. I was going to chime in on that topic too and I still will I didn't know you were going to be there but thank you understand any. Great, thank you Commissioner laser me did you want to ask any questions or for the comment. Well, I thank you chair I think Commissioner Dan covered a lot of the things that I had questions about, but there was also a picture in the first segment of this discussion. The last pick the last slide showed several different models of the possible buildings. And there were lots of shaded areas. My concern is in three story or four story building in residential areas infill, for example, that would you require that with the county require the shading. To be included in that. That's an existing requirement and there's also state law that addresses it. Yes, it's one of the design review requirements that shadow studies be provided. That would be something for any project that requires design review we would also be looking at shadow studies. We do have the ability to waive that requirement if there was no obvious impact for example it was next to some playing fields or something like that but that would always be something we would require if there was a potential to shade neighboring residential properties. Okay, and the, the height. That's allowed on some of the buildings. The, I'm looking back the the hospital up to 60 hospital and medical up to 60 feet in height for stories. Am I correct in that. Yes. I'm looking at activity center. 40 feet commercial in general is would be at 40 feet. Okay, would that would that be true even if it was in a residential area, the zoning for that area had been residential. You can still rezone that infill property or parcel to have a 40 foot height. The standard for commercials generally 35 now so it's a five foot increase, but also, there was an section that had an exception that allowed you to go to five feet anyway. So we just think this is pretty, this is cleaner just make it 40 feet, get rid of that exception part and then. So it's not, it's not actually a big change because a lot a lot of commercial entities might have used it anyway, that exemption. If I could just quickly chime in having processed a few of these commercial projects 35 foot height limit really isn't enough to allow for a development with a commercial lower floor and residential above the commercial ceiling heights are generally considerably higher than residential. And in the presentation I know that the three story residential height would be maintained at 35. But the we almost always have to do the exception for the commercial projects anyway so the Stephanie says this is being added just to basically make these projects feasible without having to ask for exceptions. Thank you, but would you put a commercial commercially zoned parcel in a residential area, and it wouldn't affect the height is am I correct in that. I would have a situation where a residentially zoned parcel wanted to rezone as commercial in order to do a commercial development. Frankly we're not seeing a lot of that these days it's exactly the opposite but I think for any individual rezoning proposal we probably would take a look at the context. The area, did it, you know, are they trying to provide a local neighborhood service that makes sense on a corner, perhaps, really would depend on the individual place. Okay, but the. Another question is these designated areas the 23 that I think in total. Would the county be driving the rezoning and paying for the rezoning, if there is a charge for the county. The 23 parcels are included in this project. This is a county project. Okay, but would it be up to the developer to apply for a rezoning. No, the rezoning is part of this project. Okay, thank you. I think that's all I have. Thank you. Hey, thank you commissioners I appreciate the questions and I've got about 20 minutes here so I'll try and breeze through it. I'm not going to have a lot of questions. Let's just get started. I do want to, again, extend the thank you to everyone who's worked on this. I know it's, you know, a lot of the planning departments team, a lot of other people and including some consultants are a lot of people working on this and so I just want to thank everyone for the energy that's gone into this and looking forward to moving it along. I had a few general questions and then just some, you know, some comments and some ideas and I'm hoping we can resolve a few things here. And again, you know, I have some really more specific things that I might just write to everyone about in the interest of time and given, you know, planning south opportunity to think about it before having to come up with some stuff on the fly. So, I'll just get started. Are there any first question is are there any form based zoning opportunities in this plan. Do you want to take them? Sure. So, originally, for example, we had proposed like no density standard for mixed use but then looking into state law and more detail and discussing with county council, the state does require that we establish density and intensity standards for commercial zones. So, so that's why, you know, we have the new FAR for example for commercial zones so that we can, you know, comply with state law.  So we did, you know, do research and establishing these standards but that we are, you know, part of the intent is to comply with California state law regarding those requirements. You're saying so as state law says that we have to provide a density. You see this kind of form based zoning and other jurisdictions and even if there's a density it's typically really high so it kind of aligns with the form that's allowed and, you know, to make sure everyone's really clear on any of the members of public or community members. It's really a setup where a parcel is given certain height requirements setbacks and other like general requirements and as long as it meets those than the density is can be much higher inside that building so you're still controlling the form with without understanding how many units that you can put in there and what that does is really creates opportunity for smaller units more units in a single space affordable by design still have to meet parking you still have to meet the other requirements, but it can get a little bit of a higher and oftentimes pencils a lot better. So, is there any opportunity to look at that a little further and add something like that in or adjust what we have to create those opportunities where appropriate not saying they're appropriate everywhere but in certain locations on corridors and things like that and where it's what we're trying to create this walkable neighborhoods it can make sense. The proposed general plan and standards don't anticipate that but widening the range of the densities allows in each of the urban zones allows more flexibility to actually meet those numbers. I think I mentioned this before but we typically aren't seeing development yet that is trying to exceed the densities that are in place now. Except in you know in some cases where we have affordable housing developer which we talked about what we could have closer to the upper range. But, but actually, in the past few years we've had to push on developments to make sure they're meeting the minimum range in our general plan. So it's like setting the floor and we've actually have modified had applicants have to modify their proposal, including when the planning commission just looked at to actually meet that minimum density. So, and I will say that the form part of it I think we've tried very hard and worked with a design company made to address in the county design guidelines. So, if it if the commission wanted to make a change, I think some standards potentially could be removed to to create that, but I'm not sure if the community as a whole would would want to see that again the balancing act you know that we talked about before. Well, I appreciate that and I totally understand the balancing act it's tough it's kind of like, you know, it's growing pains, going through that you know, like we have to do it though, not like you could just like not have growing pains when you grew up right it happens, you put that and then you grow and you get and it gets better and I think we're in that stage right now. And just generally we have this opportunity to look at the next 20 years and to really make a plan that works not just for today but the future and some of these principles look like kind of feel like they're, you know, not as much of a step forward as we could take. Some of the callers mentioned also. And I hear what you're saying about the other, you know the form being restricted in other ways and that was one question that I brought up last time about the FAR being a 1.0 so you know, I did some case studies to see how this would actually work and it seems like they generally align but it does really end up with all of our development developments looking like they do in the in the design in the design guidelines sheet where it's a building in the front and parking in the back. And you know this has a few challenges that kind of directly are opposite to other parts of what we're saying in this general plan update like there's some sections that say we are, you know, we are trying to create a game style project so I don't know if that's hard to get out. And really, this kind of design guideline doesn't really allow for that it allows for the parking in the back and the building in the front and so we're creating more of a car centric. Yeah, design I think generally across the board than we would have otherwise been able to if we had a higher FARs. So I would like to look at that and see if there's an opportunity to adjust these affairs I know it would be a challenge. But you know we get one shot at this in 20 years and it took 10 years to get here. I feel like we got to really make sure we're getting set up for the future and it feels a little bit like we're not quite there yet. Commissioner Gordon if I can just make a brief comment we in in buried in the details we do exclude parking areas from FAR so if they want to talk under parking for example that wouldn't count towards FAR so we are trying to encourage you know various options for parking. Yeah, that makes sense I appreciate that in a three story model with a 1.0 FAR at the max you're you'll. And there's a lot of things that preclude parking on the ground floor commercial on the street side right so you would have to park behind still commercial on the front. And it becomes really cost prohibitive so this is kind of like one of the other questions leads into another question that I had is, have we taken the time to have a consultant or someone, you know, members of the development community and design community kind of chime in on this general plan outside of just the community meetings. So if you look to clarify a little bit to really look at like do these projects pencil as planned right now. That's, I think that's the most important thing we say we're not getting enough developers building enough housing. It's a, it's a financial thing right for developers so if the project doesn't make money, they're not going to develop that's just, you know, just how it is same thing like we all do with our money if you put in stocks.  So, you know, with developers and encouraging them to develop more properties, if we can not just make it denser because it solves the housing crisis but also create a product that people will want to come bill. That's an important part of it. It's more than just aesthetics. It's also the financial side. So I guess back to my question. Have we had anyone look at this from a financial standpoint and say like yes, if I was going to go buy a property today. I could develop to these standards and it would work. We did work with a Matthew Thompson a local architect when we developed our res flex standards we did work closely with him and he provided a lot of examples he's worked on other local examples in terms of developing the, the development standards, and that that sort of thing. And in terms of commercial. That was a pleasure point plan we did have an economist working with us in terms of thinking about standards that made sense for commercial and we applied a lot of those concepts to the design guidelines for commercial. I was just going to add that that process also included a lot of stakeholders and groups from the community and so a lot of that work really fed the design guidelines that you have before them and so again it's well maybe there wasn't an immediate meeting this has been you know a long term development over time. I also had because I was here for the sustainability plan in 2014 and we had a working group and the working group had a number of architects and designers on that in this plan kind of. Anyway, I just thought I'd add that in, but I appreciate this discussion. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. Totally understand it, you know, I gave you a real world example like where we're at today, 35 unit project in Oakland on 8500 square foot. It's a different jurisdiction right it's a different zone, it's about 170 units maker or something like that. That is challenging to make it work. That's how hard it is right now to develop projects. It's expensive because of COVID it's expensive because lands expensive it's just overall really expensive and so we don't create guidelines that promote the ability for people to actually develop. It's not going to happen. And so what was set up for and I'm kind of like correlating with where the affordable housing part of it coming. They can, you know, affordable housing developers can often there's requirements around project size it doesn't work under certain number of units so they're going to do those bigger projects that's really all that works right. And just because they're nonprofit or affordable housing developers doesn't mean that it still also needs to make money. And so there's, you know, stakeholders from private investors there's banks that look at every single project. There's such as a huge financial aspect to everything that we're putting in place right now. And I don't feel like it matches with the existing state of the economy. Maybe in 2014, they could have could see that. But today in 2022. My experience, it's not. And so I guess my question or request would be, you know, before I could really see myself. You know, I'm bored with where we're at is to have someone look at this, you know, from a development standpoint to say, yes, this works. And that's what other jurisdictions have done when they come through general plan updates. It's not a crazy ask I think that it's just something that especially in today's economy is really important. I have to, I just have to agree with Commissioner Dan there was quite a bit of an input. There was a working group. This has had extensive public testimony. And I think it works. Great. I appreciate that opinion. Absolutely. Are you speaking of just for the, the proposed new RF zone district or just like in general for the changes with the multifamily district as well. Yeah, I think, I think this represents what was asked for and discussed in past. I understand that response. I apologize. But I interrupted you anyway so I'll just let you go. I know you have a lot. Commissioner Dan, I'm sorry. I was just asking, were you wanting that for the RF district to see it like to make sure that pencils out given the height and other they are restraints. Is that what you're asking? Yes, and the new commercial zones mixed use and, and I read as mobile family. I think that's a good idea there's so many variables with development it's difficult, right, like if it pencils out today will it maybe it'll pencil out better in five years because of who knows what right I mean I think it's good information to have. And of course you look at things in a different way which is, which is helpful. I'm going to be posted out. I just wanted clarity. Thank you. I appreciate that. I will say that during the community workshops, we, we did have the affordable housing community tell us that the density was too low. And also I think we had one member of the public Alex who kind of spoke to the floor area ratio being too low that affordable housing folks were pretty much saying a minimum of 60 units per acre would really be necessary to meet the goals and make projects more feasible. We, we discussed the reason for not doing that and giving the density bonus program, the, the place in our development to to really bring in those more affordable units. But we did have we certainly did have that feedback and I, we don't have that community here today I don't think. So I just for those who may not have heard that those comments I wanted to let you know they were, they were out there. Yeah, I did read that and that's kind of one of the why the red flag went up, you know, if it, you know, that's a big development community that we're hearing that we're not. It's not dense enough, you know, to make it work so if it doesn't work for state funded affordable programs that really like apply for money. You know, how's it going to work for the average developer who doesn't have that bench of cash or background of projects or you know a lot of people in this town don't aren't that have these properties that are potentially going to be up sound aren't necessarily like professional developers if you will they have piece of property that they want to do something with you know and they need that help and raising those funds is tough. It's kind of about millions of dollars to like develop a single project that people have to come up with in cash. So it's just like really a lot more challenging and more expensive than anyone really, you know, kind of thinks about until you really get into it so. Okay, thank you for that I have a couple other questions, I can, I can move on from that point of my kind of just naturally come back up. I'm sorry, I apologize I might fumble a little bit here just getting back on track. With the design guidelines I just really look like clear as the are these guidelines or are they rules like or is this something that someone in the planning. And what's the process that someone in the planning department review each one of those guidelines as the project gets submitted. Is it a group of people that's always the same. What's that process going to look like guidelines are are more concepts and guidance than rules so they work in tandem with the code that has more the objective standards and the guidelines with all the pictures and examples and concepts are meant to help both our planners and developers understand how you can get there. We didn't want to make them overly prescriptive to allow flexibility and some design creativity so different concepts there. Generally the guidelines should be consulted by any developer on a project and the planner who's assigned to reviewing the project would look at the design guidelines for consistency and certainly as we are introducing these new guidelines to the development community would probably have more of a team of people looking at them from from our policy folks for instance, any who's done so much work on these and has has worked with our design consultants who develop these and the pleasure point guidelines and we're looking back to the SSCC so I think until we get everybody kind of up to speed there'd be more of a team of people that are looking at at projects. I'm sorry and Tim I just wanted to jump in here. I received a second email from CTV saying that because their operator was able to take a break during the presentation that they're actually good to go on beyond noon to probably up to about one 30 minutes. I think we can. We don't have to stop but it's coming up 12 now so I just wanted to let you know. So much. I'm, you know, take the poll here. I know we, you know, it's been a few hours so we could take at least a five minute break or, you know, here in a minute to get people to drink his restroom that kind of thing or we can move on. Either way. I prefer to keep going. One. Okay. Great. Okay, so I'm leaving. Thank you very much. Thank you commissioner shepherd. The next meeting. Yep, sounds great. I was talking about design guidelines and I appreciate that, you know, it's going to take a team effort. It's kind of a balance between what we want to control and what we can control and what the state's controlling and all kinds of things right and like how we want our county to look. You know, I understand that it's challenging. I just wonder a couple things regarding this, you know, there's some specific things that require neighborhood context to be taken into place. I see this in a lot of jurisdictions, and I take a lot of positive it and because it's challenging because it's very subjective. And so, where we see a lot of cost challenges and projects and time challenges more specifically, which relate to cost is subjectivity in the process. And so I wonder if that's, you know, something that would, we would want to clarify more, or, you know, if I understand that it's pretty, you know, the process is such that someone couldn't design something or Lee I assume, but then I guess I have a lot of questions here I apologize not very succinct. Are we going to make it challenging on people to develop what they want to, for example, I don't see much in the way of like flat roofs, are those not allowed now, is that the plan. If so, like I could show you many buildings in Santa Cruz that are beautiful, aesthetically pleasing flat roof structures. This is the inherent problem in the subjectivity of neighborhood context where someone says one thing someone says the other thing and like, where do you end. And it's put a lot of problems, you know, significant time delays on the projects of ours specifically. So, is there a solution there that works a little better is there like a limit to the number of iterations that can be asked to be made you know, is there a pre meeting where design aesthetic is decided first and up front is there some way to fix this or make it a little bit easier and faster for people like go to develop. So in terms of like what sort of design styles are allowed that the design styles, the design guidelines are definitely intend to be flexible and allow modern designs traditional designs and there's not an expectation that you match the design style necessarily of an adjacent site. So, so they are intended to be flexible and the guidance is more about like appropriate transitions where you might have, you know, modulated building fronts but the intention is that we allow flexibility in terms of design. And in terms of redevelopment we do have a process and those and probably speak to that more detail but we do have certainly have an option to do a pre development consultation for projects where they can, you know, get some initial feedback and input before they design their project. Yeah, okay that makes sense and I appreciate that. I think if we can really clarify somewhere in there that's like it's, it's suggestions it's not requirements because that gets tricky. And, you know, there's a project that I brought to this commission that had done all those steps. And Rachel mentioned it earlier. Another commissioner at the time mentioned that it looked like something along the lines that it looked like it fell from outer space and voted no. You know that kind of that is the reality of how it feels to be a developer coming to this commission going through this process feeling the risk of like they could just say no because they just don't like it and then those millions of dollars that I just spent are on the drain. And so that's the where I'm coming from is like I'd really like to help the community and those who are going to develop in these ways to like feel comfortable that like they can work through this process and get here and like not feel scared or be set up appropriately so that their project is correct you know that kind of thing. That's a background. And yeah, just just one more comment with some of the legislative efforts that are coming down from the state. And there's really a move to get away from non objective standards. And so that the language, both in the introductory material of the guidelines as well as the code section in 1311 that really ties in the guidelines does does talk about kind of consistency and concepts. So that is, that is specifically written in in both those, those sections. Maybe, I actually was going to ask about design stuff too but I didn't and so I appreciate to make you brought this up because. There are two things. One, though I think in the 15 years I've been on this commission, there have been lots of comments about design. I can't remember a single time somebody ever voted against a project because they didn't like the design, but, but, but I understand it's a real concern. And then I'd also say maybe we could just have it maybe this is part of the reason why this concern came up was a lot of the photos in the presentations have been of a specific style kind of, I don't even know what you call it but like the general same kind of general style but if there's a way to maybe have some examples that that you know the, the design suggestions guidelines that are completely different style that might be helpful, give, give, you know developers a little bit more comfort like okay I can have something more modern and then I would just say yeah flat roofs should be part of that because if you in some cases you can make the roof, an outdoor space, which is a great idea, I think, I'm especially if we're going to get more dense we have to figure out creative ways to, you know to have more outside space and so. Yeah, I just wanted to support that those lines of comments there. I appreciate that. Yes, absolutely. And one other thing to add and I've seen this mother jurisdictions is when the design guidelines are made there's it all there's this. You know, not just the verbiage but picture showing okay you need articulation every 10 feet here's kind of what that looks like or so we expect one thing that I wasn't clear on reading through is our windows considered articulation. And that's for the purposes of these design guidelines. And you know if it's not really super clear what we mean, people are just going to have a lot of questions, and it's going to be challenging so I think you don't have to do that everywhere but in some scenarios it might make sense to really clarify with some some drawings. Great. Thank you. Any specific questions here are our town homes going to be allowed in our one zone. I know a lot of this is pushing towards smaller smaller properties for our one districts. I don't believe town homes are always allowed in our one or maybe not allowed at all I think there's a little bit of ambiguity between general plan and zoning standards on that. I think we're really clear if, if a lot of those pictures again back to the picture like Commissioner Dan mentioned a lot of those are connected like town home style buildings. So, just wondering if that's a change or something that will happen. Annie do you have a thought on that. I, I'm sorry I actually need to check that I can, I can look at that while we're talking and get back to you. Yes, I can answer right now. Single family attached units are allowed in our ones on districts so yes they could be. Single family attached are they allowed currently or that's a change. Right now. There is a rule. We allow semi detached dwellings where you share one wall that's on the property line with an adjacent in the R14 and smaller zone districts so I'm not sure how it's changing but that's the current regulation. Yeah it would be changing to basically allow attached single family which basically means town homes in in all the residential districts. Great. I think that's a really good option and it allows, especially like the sites like Commissioner Dana saying where a lot of it's not buildable or. You know you want to focus in a single spot, getting rid of this, this side yard is a really good way to really compact that a little bit and it matches a lot of the aesthetic so thank you. I think I'm really not clear on is the RF design guidelines and I've been, you know, kind of searching all the docs and I didn't see a specific RF zone design guideline in the 120 page design guideline packet. I mean it's just me I'm just not really seeing where those are at. And so I wonder if someone can help clarify where that is, or if it is part of another section of the design guidelines. Yes there actually there's not a separate section for residential flex because it is basically another type of multifamily housing is just a higher you know intensity and density development so so it's, it's the same concepts that apply to in the multifamily chapter in the overarching chapter of the design guidelines would also apply to res flex. There are few places in the design guidelines where it specifically addresses res flex such as, you know, since the open space provisions allow for both private and common open space and encourages you know open space common open space and larger sites. There are some specific guidance in the design guidelines for, you know, multi multi corridors where you might want to have the open space in the middle of the site where there's more traffic that isn't specifically about res flex but it might apply you know more often to res flex where you might expect that housing to be located, but there's not a separate chapter or res flex sites. Okay, and so to be clear, it's on the, it relates to the multi family and not the mixed use zone. It was, we do have mixed use as well so but res flex is a residential so yes he'd be applying the multifamily standards. So does that mean those properties on Portola that are getting changed are going to residential only with no commercial ground floor. Yes. Okay. But the mix is more in the neighborhood right at the neighborhood level, rather than on a particular site. So I guess I'm trying to think about this and I think other commissioners might have asked as well. It's hard to understand all of these new zones or changes to the current zones without understanding like where they apply. So in my mind are with, you know, maybe missing this somewhere in this that it was either a mixed use or, you know, I assume it was a mixed use but maybe that I was clearly wrong. I'm wondering like, are we actually applying a lot of non mixed use zones to commercial corridors. Is that going to happen all the way down Portola, you know that kind of a thing makes me think through what we're allowing for these zones differently. And so is there a way to like clarify what where these will actually be applied or the plan for that. Beyond beyond being able to map where the multimodal corridors are talking about where those corridors are. We don't have a kind of a specific plan for this parcel this parcel this parcel beyond what you're seeing in the map amendments that we reviewed. However, I will say that next year as we work through our housing element update and the arena. We are going to have to be looking at sites that are intensified for residential use and that work is, is immediately followed up with potential and proposed rezoning in order to meet the rena so at that point you would see kind of a grander plan of where those could be And so I would just spice it to say it's it is in along the corridors and it is in the USL and that's why we talked a lot about the framework earlier. I get the general principle one question I had the kind of relates to this is in the presentation you mentioned that the the density for mixed use projects was 45 units an acre but if it's if the RS zone is not a mixed project then from everything else I've seen commercial mixed use is only 30 units an acre. Right, this is a change the right now it's actually the high density density range of 17.4 units per acre for mixed use. So now we would allow it up to 45 units per acre on a mixed use site. And because of the shifts we're seeing away from the brick and mortar commercial that we talked about. And based on some past examples on the code would also change to allow up to 75% of the site to be used for residential so that's a that's a shift as well. And that's on our commercial zones. Okay, that makes sense. So it's as the way our county code is now is that if I have a commercial mixed use project. It defers the density if I do a mixed use project to the RUH zone right and what you're saying is that it will now defer to the RUH. Yes, base, basically yes. Okay, so the zone itself might not change you'll still be a mixed use zone just kind of be first the density. Okay, that makes sense. So we will see higher densities than 30 on this on the corridors essentially. It's not 30 now it's 17.4 now. There are there are density bonuses that could come into play w