Planning Board - Regular Meeting

May July 13th, exactly 7 p.m., and we'll go ahead and begin tonight's planning board meeting. Before we start the agenda, Board Member Su, can you lead us in a Pledge of Allegiance?

Sure. Will you please stand? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. And we'll go ahead with the first agenda item, which is roll call.

Okay. Good evening. Board Member Hom.

Here.

Board Member Hsu. Here. Board Member Wang. Here. And President Cisneros.

Here.

Okay. We have a quorum.

Great. And yeah, we have a tight board today, but we will carry on. And so the next agenda item are, oh, actually before that, I always forget this part. So this is official city business meetings, and I just want to give a little preamble before we get deeper into tonight's meeting and share some rules about our meeting conducts. We ask that folks listen respectfully. And some folks may be public speaking for the first time, so things can be stressful. So we want to create an environment that's supportive and also to not only respect each other, but also respect the board as we are deliberating and coming to consensus with certain city agenda items. So I just wanted to share that. And there are, if things were elevated, could lead to consequences if there are violations. So just wanted to name that. Okay. And now we'll move on to agenda item two. Any agenda changes from staff or the board?

None tonight.

Any non-agenda public comments? Anyone could speak either in the room or online for up to three minutes for anything that's not listed in tonight's meeting agenda. Do we have any speakers?

We don't have any speakers. Oh, wait.

Actually, wait one second.

We have Philip Kake online.

Okay.

Hey, Philip, you're allowed to talk.

Oh, sorry, I meant I wanted to talk on the Agenda 5A. Oh, okay. Yeah, sorry.

All right. Thank you. So we'll circle back at that agenda item. We'll close that item and move on to consent calendar. We have the draft meeting minutes from June 22nd. Any discussion from fellow board members? And if not, oh.

We don't have the proper members present to be able to vote on that.

Oh, I see. Okay. So we'll carry it over. Yeah. Great. We'll continue it. Thank you for flagging that. And with that, we'll move on to agenda item 5A, which is to review some proposed zoning ordinance amendments for short-term rental policies. So it looks like we'll have a staff presentation. Yes. Mm-hmm.

I'll just move over here and make it a little more formal. My name is Steve Buckley. I'm the planning services manager, and I'll be presenting on the short-term rental proposal this evening. As you recall, we There we go. Yeah. So we're going to review a little bit of where we've been. And then I'll go over the ordinance that we've drafted at the staff level to address your feedback and the community feedback that we've heard so far. And then we'd like to wrap up. hear more feedback and make sure that we're on the right track and if possible get a recommendation tonight for the city council noting that of course there's no rush so you know if we end up needing to redraft some things that's fine too all of this is basically in response to The housing element and the discussions that were carried on leading up to the 2022 adoption of the housing element including policy age 19 where this issue was brought forward as something that the city would undertake in the in the coming years to limit short-term rentals Because they do have and effect on the supply of long-term housing for sale and for rent, whether that's a major impact or lesser impact is sort of up to the beholder. But it is one element of how we try to manage our housing supply for all residents. With that, we'll proceed. Last year, in January and in April, we came to you with sort of a proposal for how we would approach this. Then we went ahead and had a workshop and heard back from the community members who are operators of short-term rentals as well as neighbors of short-term rentals and kind of their concerns and I think we've tried to really balance those interests in terms of neighborhood character and economic benefits of having the opportunity to use a property for short-term rental. And so some of what we heard from the board in particular was it didn't really seem to be like a widespread problem or significantly affecting the housing supply, but it was still a worthwhile endeavor to try to come up with some sort of reasonable regulations. One of the key components was to try to make sure that these are owner occupied, or at least that someone is on site that can manage the activity and make sure it's not a nuisance to the neighbors. But otherwise, it seemed like property could be used almost year round for short-term rental so long as it, again, wasn't adversely affecting the neighborhood. One of the things that we wanted to note was that ADUs, accessory dwelling units, that are created under state law are by law prohibited from being used as short-term rentals. So there's a little bit of distinction that I'll go into later, but basically there's a few things that we can't allow, and that's just not even... in our discretion. But generally, it seemed like we wanted to just make sure that people were safe and comfortable on the property, that these were code compliant units or spaces that wouldn't create a hazard. And also just that we wanted to sort of take a light touch on enforcement. It seemed like that's our general policy. We offer people plenty of opportunities to come into compliance with building codes or zoning codes. We don't go out and look for trouble. But if we hear a complaint or we see something that looks concerning, then we will initiate an investigation. And then that could lead to some sort of enforcement. so that we would continue to take that sort of approach. So in the ordinance, We took an example, looked at lots of other examples, but Santa Monica seemed to have a really good framework. It was very thorough and clear. It spells out what properties are eligible to be used, who's eligible to rent, what the responsibilities are of both the people who are renting the property out and the people who are coming to visit. And then there's, again, some enforcement measures. But to be clear, we talked last time about sort of hosted, non-hosted, semi-hosted. And that seemed to be kind of confusing. So we've adopted the Santa Monica model for this reason as well, because they define terms like short-term rental, less than 30 days. And it's an accessory use. It can't be a primary commercial use of a property. And so in that sense, again, we're trying to maintain the character of the neighborhoods. It needs to be a primary residence of the person who is offering it for rent. So they have to live there at least the majority of the year, either in the space that's being rented out or in a separate space but on the same property. And then they get into home sharing and vacation rental. And so we've adopted those terms as well. Home sharing is where you're actually sharing the same home that you live in. It might be a fourth bedroom, or it might be a sort of connected but separate space. like where I lived when I was a teenager, down in the basement. And so there's sort of those kinds of spaces that are flexible, and they could have different purposes for family or visitors or for rental. But they're not technically a dwelling unit. And then there's vacation rental, which is where it's actually a separate space. It's a separate dwelling unit or a separate cottage or however you want to talk about it. But again, it can't be technically an ADU under state law. So this is often a multi-unit property, like developed in the 40s. There's a cottage in the back and a house in the front. Or it's an upstairs-downstairs Victorian. And there's a basement unit. It's been there forever. It's not an ADU because it wasn't created as an exception to zoning. It was created. under the rules that were in place at the time. And so it's eligible for use as a short-term rental. And then we want to make sure that there's always somebody available, even if the owner and permanent resident is away on vacation, that they have a local contact. So that's some really basic considerations. So again, in the ordinance, we talk about where they're permitted, any residential building, also boats, floating homes, liveaboards, and then other separate sleeping spaces. But they can't be sort of sheds or basements that aren't finished. So they need to be places that are habitable and meet code. Not permitted, things like group housing, of different kinds, ADUs. There's also another state prohibition on SB9 subdivisions, which are these new lot split subdivisions where if you take advantage of state law, again, the intent of that state law is to create permanent housing. So you can't use it for short-term rental. Also various kinds of affordable housing that's deed restricted and apartments that have been subject to an eviction of some kind or have ongoing code violations. So that's where you can and can't do it. Again, we want it to be safe, so we have these standards. It has to be up to code for residential occupancy and have various safety features. And then you can't exceed certain occupancy limits or have commercial rentals like for parties. You need to have some good neighbor policies, insurance. And then we want to require the operator to actually list their permit number in their advertisements so that we can kind of cross-reference that everyone who's advertising is also registered. That permit number would come through this process that's meant to be fairly straightforward, kind of like any other business license, home occupation, sort of registration process, where it's not a hearing. There's no appeal unless, for instance, an applicant is denied. are unhappy with that denial. But otherwise, it would be at the staff level, and it would run with the business license, which is renewed every year. So every year, there would be a sort of, again, like file your paper on time, pay your fee, and then you're good to go. So we wouldn't have a big review process once it's up and running unless we hear complaints. We would also have a phase-in period, what we're calling an amnesty period. So if this ordinance is adopted, there would be a chance for people to kind of figure out what they need to do. We'd do some outreach, have the handouts, make sure everybody knows how to get onto our website. And this would all be online and very simple. And then, as I mentioned, the enforcement would be through our standard administrator citation process, which starts with a warning and then incrementally more serious fines. So that's pretty much it. We're happy to answer any questions tonight and hear your thoughts.

Great presentation. Thank you. I'll bring it to the board for clarifying questions. Board Member Hall?

Yeah, just to clarify. Thank you for the staff report. I did reveal the ordinance and the notes of the working committee, which I thought did a really good job discussing all the issues. Just one question. It seems like primary residence seems to be a key item in order to allow unhosted. You mentioned primary residence reside like six months or more. I don't see that in the definition there's required time period. Is there a reason that wasn't included?

We could add that. It's sort of a term of art, like for tax purposes and other reasons. I mean, if you reside in California, you must have a regular presence here. And that's sort of the idea. So same with living in this property on Alameda. The expectation would be, even if you go on vacation or whatever, that this is your legal residence. But we could add that specifically.

Yeah, I'm just asking because you mentioned in your presentation, and I noticed it's not included in the definition.

Thank you.

That's really was my only question Thanks for the presentation Steve yeah, just a follow-up clarifying question support member hum so I guess so the idea is that if you have a Well, let me reframe it, I guess. Is the only way someone is able to host or have a STR is they have to have a primary residence in Alameda and can only have technically by definition and also by the way this is defined in the ordinance only one primary resident. So the idea is that what I'm trying to get They're only going to be able to host or have one STR because they can only have one primary residence. That's the requirement. Is that the idea? Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that's a point of discussion we could delve into. We also specify that it would be on properties up to four units. And I think we had some discussion before about, well, what if, say, they have a basement unit and a cottage in the back, and they still live upstairs in the main house? Well, could they short-term rental all of the rest of the space? And I think that's still up for discussion. I think we framed it as no more than one of those spaces. Yes. And they have to live on site.

Right. Yeah. Did this kind of the way that they were trying to approach it here, is this exactly how the Santa Monica Ordinance tried to handle this issue, I guess, of somebody having a home that they own in Alameda and then buying another home and deciding, or buying a duplex and saying, let's rent those out. Is that what, is this how Santa Monica tried to tackle the problem or that issue?

Right. Right. Okay. So there's less speculation.

Right.

I mean, just thinking out loud of like how to actually like enforce that. I mean, you'd have to, uh, figure out a way to check if someone you know they actually live there and whether it's the time okay I'm just more rambling now but yeah I'll have more thoughts on that thanks yeah thank you Steve I have a couple questions just to understand

more the nature of the complaint process, given that it kind of lives somewhere else in the code. So I have a couple examples in mind, if you don't mind just maybe walking through those examples. So let's say someone, let's say there's an operating STR. They have a permit. Someone makes a noise complaint, and then that occurs a few times within a certain period. Can you maybe walk through what that would look like, what would happen?

Yeah. These sort of temporal complaints are tricky sometimes because we have to send somebody out to verify it. Now, if someone is able to record it with a timestamp and, you know, over time we see a pattern, then that helps us be able to send someone at the right time, whether it's, you know, Friday night, most likely. Saturday night, something like that. We do have a code officer that's available to go out at odd hours. But yeah, we would try to take the totality of the evidence, whether it's from the neighbors, then talk to the owner, see if they can verify or argue against the complaint. And then we would, as I said, do an investigation.

OK. But you also talked about, I think it was a three or four step kind of laddering process where

let's say you had four verified incidents, at that point you would? Then we would probably undertake a suspension. So I think what we're talking about is a warning, and then maybe a 30-day suspension, and then a $500 fine, or escalating to a $1,000 fine. We would have that system. I'm sorry, I don't know exactly what those steps are, but something along those lines.

Okay, I think it's not, I guess in this particular ordinance it's not super clear. So eventually when it gets to the, if and when it gets to the administrative piece, I guess having that enforcement process be spelled out I think would be helpful for the public. I have a second question. That's kind of along the lines of board members whose question, which is to say, let's say you have a permitted STR and then someone comes and they have a complaint and they say, actually, that is not their primary residence. I wonder if you've considered what that complaint process then looks like, whether it kind of mirrors a more general scenario, like a noise scenario, or if it's slightly different.

Yeah. Sorry, going back to the enforcement, there is actually, there's no page numbers here, but on this attachment under 30-19.6 , it talks about the escalating enforcement, warning, suspension, and revocation. Sorry. Something more like an ownership, like a factual investigation, is a little easier. verify from their application they're supposed to provide documentation up front, and then we can verify if that's still true or if there's some other evidence like property ownership and those sorts of things.

I guess what I have in mind, and we can talk about this more in the comment part of our evening, is that If someone is warranted that a property is their primary residence and it's not, you can't really warn them about that. It either is or it isn't, right? Oh, well. We're not really going to warn them to move into the STR, I think.

We would warn them that we would revoke their permit, and they would have to turn it into a long-term rental.

Right. So it's a little bit more binary, this situation, than another type of situation, I think.

Yeah, and I think in any event, the warning would be either comply or we will revoke. And so they can do that in any way that they are able.

Right, that's fair. OK, switching topics, this was just a clarification question in the staff report. Under the section on types of buildings and spaces in the staff report, you have a sentence that reads, homeowners would be able to host visitors in units that they do not own if they are on the same property. I think that's supposed to say that they do not occupy.

Correct.

OK. OK. Thank you. Those are all my questions.

Great. Any other clarifying questions from fellow board members? If not, I just want to double check these items. So this would apply to all ADUs and you said in your presentation that ADUs are not eligible for STRs. And that's partly because of state law. And therefore, newly constructed ADUs are not eligible for STRs, right? OK. And that's, again, the logic statement laddering up because state law effectively makes it. OK. Just wanted to double check on that. And same case with SB 9 units, like it's kind of somewhat already embedded in state law. Sorry, I'm just kind of repeating back just to make sure I fully understand. And then we received a written comment. In my reading of the ordinance, it seemed like the concern with the complaint of this primary house being an STR wouldn't be allowable in the future. This is like the Otis Drive situation. I think the piece that's maybe missing a little bit is this conversation about the enforcement element, but otherwise, it seemed like that would not be allowed. I'm just repeating back again. The host should be in that residence, in that home. Is that right?

Yeah. Exactly. And as was quoted, you can only have one primary residence at a time.

A host could live in an ADU and rent out the house or whatever, the other unit as an STR.

That is a workaround, yeah.

Yeah, okay. Okay, those are all my, oh yes, Board Member Hall.

Actually, you triggered a question in my mind, and I meant to ask this too. When I, excuse me, when I read the ordinance, it also indicates that a host can be a tenant, as long as that tenant's a long-term tenant. So in that scenario, you could have someone who owns the house, but does not actually live in it, so they're not the primary tenant, But the tenant is able to rent out their space or the unit as an STR. Is that right? So that's the one exception for a primary residence, that they could actually rent out their rental.

Yes. So it's essentially subletting. With the landlord's permission, most likely, I mean, most leases would say you can't do that without their permission. But subletting or short-term renting of rooms would be allowed for those tenants as well. There's a limit that they can't charge more than their rent cap that's established in the rent program.

OK, so just to bring up perhaps a worst case scenario, which would be rare. So you have a property owner that owns six homes, say. He rents out all of them to long-term tenants. So all six homes can potentially be a short-term rental. If the tenant is the primary?

Yes.

Okay, so that's an exception. So technically that property owner could actually have multiple short-term rentals along with their tenants or long-term.

Yeah, as long as the tenant is the one who's operating the short-term rental. So we wouldn't want to pass through where somehow there's a shadow world of tenants who aren't really tenants who are then short-term rentaling. Yeah, no, I understand. On behalf of an owner, that wouldn't apply.

I just want to clarify that. There is this avenue that's potentially available for a primary property owner to have more than one short-term rental, right?

Right, right, because the host would not be the owner. The host would be the tenant.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, thanks.

All right. If no other clarifying questions, I think that's it. Thank you so much for that. Okay. Thank you. And we'll go ahead and transition to public comments. I have three written slips here. I'm wondering if we have any public comment speakers online?

It looks like we have four online.

Okay. I'm wondering, how does the board feel? Do we want to do the three minutes for everyone? So that would be seven. Yeah? Everyone's fine with that?

Yeah. Sorry? I'm wondering if there are more speakers.

Yeah, I don't think we're not going to get more than these, yeah. But we might get more online.

Actually, we just lost one, so we have three. We lost one? Okay.

All right. In that case, all right, it sounds like the board, we're all supportive of, because when we tend to have a lot of public comment speakers, we sometimes adjust the comment period from three minutes to two minutes each, but in this case, we'll go ahead and do the three minutes. So I'll start with in-person speaker. We have Warren Wong. Yeah, you want to come up to the podium?

Good evening, planning commissioners and city attorney and planning staff. My name is Warren Wong. I'm a longtime resident of Alameda and also a licensed commercial and residential real estate appraiser, having served for my 30 years after I was the manager of the Bank of America's regional office, as well as 20 years as a probate referee for San Francisco County, appraising most of the estates and trusts there. I'm speaking today in a sense of caution. I'm not saying I'm directly against this, but I just want to make sure we utilize some best practices and want to make sure that we take this in consideration. I just want to make sure we use good safeguards, but let's also understand that when you impose something like an ordinance like this, you're dealing with one of the issues which is called the bundle of rights theory. That's a real estate term and a legal term. So what you're taking away potentially is one's ability to market a property in a broader sense. So please keep that in mind. The other thing I want to make sure you understand is how could this potentially impact something in a property that someone who is a long-term owner that might want to sell the property down the road to ensure the highest value for it in the market if they decide to do like a Prop 19. tax transfer to another residential property as a principal unit in another county. First of all, I want to say thank you for writing a good ordinance. I think it had generally good safeguards in language and also some good elements of protection there. I think the key thing we want to do for the takeaway here is limit, how can I say it, speculative rental, where people buy property just to make it an Airbnb. And having stayed in Airbnbs when I go to conventions around the country, it's kind of a nice thing to have. And as well as it's managed well. But the key thing I want to make sure we're clear about is that I want to ensure that when we do allow these to take place, that we allow quiet enjoyment for people in the neighborhoods. So that's good. So other than that, the only thing I want to say is, Oh, OK. Sorry.

You left us in a cliffhanger there. I think we got the sentiment. So yeah, thank you so much. I really appreciate your public comments. Thank you. Yes. Maybe we'll bring it online to the next speaker.

So the first speaker we have is Athena Moghadam. I'm going to let you allow you to talk.

Yes, hi, good evening. Can you hear us?

Yes.

Perfect. Hi, good evening. This is Athena and Loay speaking. I have previously appeared before you to explain that our family depends on income from our short-term rental to help pay for our property and maintain our housing here in Alameda. We maintain an STR on San Antonio, close to Park Street. And we often host families, people visiting their families in Alameda, and have generally been happy to host people who have been very low maintenance and just a joy to deal with. I did want to ask about the ADU language in the ordinance. The ordinance as written excludes all ADUs. Previously, some of the feedback to prior versions of the ordinance as discussed, there was a cutoff of 2017 that was talked about. I've also seen online 2020 cutoffs mentioned for construction of ADUs that acts as a cutoff for when STRs may or may not be permitted. And I wanted to ask why all of that was excluded in the current language.

Yeah, because the state's law does not exclude all ADUs, but looks like in the staff language all ADUs are excluded. And it was referred that it was excluded because the state laws exclude it. So I wonder why Alameda is putting more restrict options on ADU while state doesn't.

And to clarify this, more than likely it would impact our family in direct ways, so it's very important to us that this be considered and we'd be very grateful if you would take a moment to address it.

Okay.

Thank you. I think that's all for us.

Thank you. Thank you for your comments. We'll bring it back to the room. Next speaker is Steve Boosie. Sorry, I said your last name wrong.

Good evening. My name is Steve Busse. I attended and spoke at both of the workshops we had last year. My wife and I own a home in Alameda that was built in 1885, something like that. In the backyard is a cottage that was built in 1909 as an in-law unit for the owner's mother and father-in-law. We've operated as a short-term rental for the last 12 years. We've had a business license the entire time. Initially, it was just an apartment license because there was no such thing as a short-term rental business license in Alameda, but we've updated that. One of the concerns I have reading the ordinance, it sounds like our use is allowed, given that we have a home with a cottage in the backyard. However, later in the ordinance, it mentions the address has to be the same. And in 1909, the cottage was given a different address. It's 1181 as opposed to 1183 that I live in. And I could see the way the ordinance is written that a clerk who was trying to approve my application would say, no, you can't. This other property is next door. However, it is on the same parcel on the same property. Just want to make sure that's clarified. Other concern I have is the, and this doesn't affect me at all, but the fact that there's no grandfather. exemption. All they have is 60 days. If someone does not live, if someone's invested millions of dollars in a home and furnished it and decorated it, they've got 60 days before they have to find permanent tenants. It seems like a very short window of time to me. It doesn't affect me, but it just sort of stood out in the audience to me. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate your public comments. Should we move online to the next speaker?

Let's see, it looks like we have three more online speakers. And the next one is Karen Bay. Karen, you are allowed to talk.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Maybe try turning down the volume on the computer.

I heard she's connected to two. Yeah, two audios, yeah.

Okay, maybe should we come back to her?

Yeah, we'll come back to you, Karen.

Okay, we'll come back to you, Karen. So then the next speaker is Sadeem. Allow you to talk.

Good evening, board members and Madam President. I think you've heard from a couple of members of the public today about them being great hosts, and that's awesome to hear. I bring to you a situation that's not so great. As an example, I have a I live on the West End. I have a home across the street from me that was for sale and didn't successfully sell and so they started renting it on Airbnb at a very affordable price which resulted in weekend rentals and party after party after party and the overall effect was very disturbing on the neighborhood and a complete nuisance. The host is not in Alameda. They live in the valley somewhere, maybe in Tracy or Modesto, I can't remember, but far enough where they can't get here with any speed. And so my first issue regarding your language and the proposed ordinance is we're talking about local hosts i would like to see a flushed out definition of what local means and not only a 60-minute not only a 60-minute response time, but maybe a proximity in terms of distance to Alameda, which I think would be helpful in these types of situations. I do appreciate the hosted aspect of your proposed ordinance, and I think that's great. And I'll just end on, I think it's great that SHORT-TERM RENTALS ARE HAPPENING IN ALAMEDA AND WE'RE TRYING TO REGULATE THEM AND THAT THE CITY WILL GET TO COLLECT SOME TOT AS PART OF THIS PROCESS TO OFFSET THE SERVICES. SO THAT'S ALL. THANK YOU.

GREAT. THANK YOU. NEXT SPEAKER, JULIE ANN.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Julianna Cano. I am a five-star super host on Airbnb. I'm also a third generation Alamedan, and I'm proud to call this town my home. So I understand that everyone in this room shares the same goal, making Alameda an affordable and vibrant place to live. But restricting responsible short-term rentals is not the solution to our housing challenges. What short-term rentals do provide is meaningful economic support for local homeowners and our local economy. This additional income for myself and for others help pay property taxes, insurance, and maintenance. It helps me continue here to live in Alameda. Visitors who stay in my STRs are grandparents, who visit their children and grandchildren, sons and daughters who visit their mothers, and out-of-town guests who want a safe and quiet neighborhood outside of San Francisco. Our guests contribute to Alameda's economy by shopping local, tasting our local brews, and watching our famous 4th of July parade. However, I also recognize concerns about noise and neighborhood impacts. Those concerns are valid, but they should be addressed through effective enforcement of existing rules, responsible hosts already required, quiet hours, occupancy limits, and immediate responses to complaints. The small number of bad actors should not determine policy for everyone else. After all, this is not the French Quarter in New Orleans. Alameda has a long tradition of welcoming visitors while preserving the character of its neighborhoods. We are not Oakland. We are not Berkeley. We are not Santa Monica or other cities who have long-term rentals. We are a town of very limited and clean and safe accommodations for our grandparents who are visiting their grandchildren. Our short-term rentals offer clean and safe accommodations. Having long-term rentals will not only affect us rental hosts, but it will affect the grandmother who is visiting their grandchildren for the week and their families. I respectfully ask the council to continue support well-regulated short-term rentals. They strengthen our local economy, help residents remain in their homes, and provide safe and clean accommodations for visitors and families. Let's focus our efforts on addressing the true causes of our housing shortage while preserving an important source of income for Alameda residents and an important asset for our community. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Great. Thank you. And I guess the next online speaker?

The next person we have online is Phillip Kaki. So Phillip, I'm going to allow you to talk.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, thank you. Thank you for the well considered ordinance. I am a real estate agent. I've been a real estate agent in Alameda for over 20 years and I also operate short-term rental. It doesn't really affect me because I live in the unit. It's a duplex. It's solid to code. It's not an ADU or anything else. I'm not hosting a private home. However, from Listening to this, I think what I'm concerned about is, say, single-family homes that are excluded because the owner doesn't live there. A lot of times, just from the market standpoint of how an Airbnb or a VRBO operates, having a larger home It's a nice amenity to have for a larger family who's traveling. I don't really see where the speculators would come into Alameda and start to buy up homes. I don't think that there's the market to be had for somebody to really make a large amount of money off of something like this. I don't really see that as something that would probably... it just wouldn't attract the kind of person who would want to get a return on investment like that. I do, unfortunately, hearing about the gentleman's home in the West End where there's parties, I think for the most part, the people that I've had through have been very quiet. There's a very low impact on the neighborhood and in fact, probably in some cases less because there's not another car here permanently. So I think I'm certainly all in favor of having good rental policies and a good ordinance, but I think there is an aspect to this where you will eliminate certain people that are, they may own a home, they may not live in Alameda. Unfortunately, the other situation on the West End, it's kind of an extreme example, but A large home as a rental is a valuable property. So just by excluding them, you'll be cutting out a certain part of the market for the people that do want to continue this as an economic activity. And other than that, thank you for the time.

Thank you. We have more speakers.

Okay, so we have next up is Catherine Chang. Catherine, allowing you to talk.

Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi, so my family owns a unit and I actually live next door and I manage the unit and we've had situations where there was some nuisance and the neighbors have my phone number and they call me. I call the cops or had to call the fire department and It's been very smooth, but this is like I'm a single mom and it's a very second income to me. So creating all this ordinance could create situation for myself, even though my family owns it and I help them manage it. And the people that do come here and that stay at our place are usually people that work in Alameda or they come to visit. We get a lot of traveling nurses. And so there's just a variety of people. And we have our set rules. So I know that some Airbnbs don't have strict rules like we do. And I live right next door. So I'm able to accommodate any issue that goes on. Also question is that we rent out rooms, some are long-term rentals and some are short-term rentals. So would that make a difference if they're not all short-term rentals? If there's some long-term rentals, some short-term rentals? I think that's mostly it.

Thank you.

Okay, then that's it.

That's it? Okay, great. And with that, we'll go ahead and close for the comment and bring it back to the board for deliberations. This is to help inform our recommendation to the city council where that decision will be made.

Anyone want to kick us off?

Yes, Board Member Hahn.

Maybe just to start, does staff want to respond to some of the public comments, the questions that were asked?

Yeah, sure. Obviously, the bundle of rights and quiet enjoyment are fundamental real estate considerations. I don't think short-term rental is necessarily I'll leave it to the city attorney to say whether that's a protected right or just one of many rights that we're regulating under our police power. But as far as the ADU cutoff, I do see where the staff report didn't distinguish exactly that we were going beyond state law. So these laws were enacted in 2017, and so they do essentially take effect then. And so anything before 2017 could be considered grandfathered or exempt from that state prohibition. We went ahead and just made it all that were developed under ADU law, again, meaning they received exemptions from standard zoning, either for density or setbacks or some other development standard, because we don't really have that many that are pre-2017. And so what we would do is basically just screen all the applicants and just figure out, like, does it have an ADU tag on the permit? And if it does, then it's eligible unless, again, it's either renter-occupied and that's being sublet or owner-occupied and the main building is being used as the STR. So there would be a couple of exceptions built in there, but it's termed as if It can't be used as short-term rental as an economic activity solely as the primary activity. So would we also exclude renters from STRs? Maybe we would.

So I actually wanted to make a comment on the ADU issue, if I could. So as Steve mentioned, the ADU state law has prohibitions against short-term rentals for certain classifications of ADUs and junior accessory dwelling units. The state law has changed over the years, and it's very difficult to track exactly which categories of ADUs have those particular rental restrictions. You can generally base it on the year that the ADU was constructed, but there are so many different exceptions to that and fact-specific cases because, as you know, our ADUs, sometimes they're built in 1909 and they were not legally permitted until 2018. So is that an ADU that is created under state law or is it a grandparented ADU? It's really a a difficult type of decision to make. Also, the city's code for quite some time has also restricted ADUs from being rented on a short-term basis. And so given the complexity with this, staff is recommending, and of course it's up to you all, But staff is recommending that it is very difficult to figure out which ADUs are required to be restricted for short-term rentals under state law and even under the city's own ordinances. And so we're recommending a blanket prohibition against short-term rentals of ADUs for that reason, because it is too difficult to differentiate from an administrative standpoint, the various categories. So just wanted to give you our full reasoning there.

picture up on the screen. If you would indulge me just for a minute. So this shows a typical Alameda neighborhood. It's got sort of mixed historical zoning and development patterns, but it's very mixed. If you go to the next one. This is off of Park Avenue and Broadway. This is where today some short-term rentals are available and they're going rates for a two-night stay. This isn't all of them by any means. As you zoom in and out, different ones appear on the map. But this is kind of a smattering of today's rentals. And there are all kinds of rentals. I looked some of them up, and they're all kinds of properties. And I wanted to just show you some samples, not of these literal ones, but similar ones. Go ahead. On the left here, you have a four-unit building. It has a front door, but really the other entrances are on the side, and there's parking in back. In the middle, you have a front house and a back house. And one or both of those could also have two units in it. And then another four-unit project next door, or probably more than four. And so all of these may or may not be eligible depending on if the owner lives there or if the tenant has the owner's permission to then sublet, essentially, a room in their apartment or rent it out while they're gone on vacation, things like that. Another multi-unit building, kind of the same deal. I lived in one of these for a while, and the owner lived upstairs in the owner's unit. It was a bigger three-bedroom unit. And then the other three tenants had one-bedroom units. We all got along great, but the owner was always there. And so theoretically, they could short-term rental one or more of those units, depending on how we write the ordinance. Next. And then houses with the basement unit or a duplex side by side, upstairs, downstairs. There's all kinds of traditional housing forms. These are not ADUs necessarily, but they're duplex and other kinds of units. And so we're not saying that those can't be short-term rental as long as the owner lives on site or the tenant has the owner's permission. And then the courtyard units, that's a really tricky situation. But again, I think you get the gist of it. We just have all these housing types. So we're not prejudging any of them. We're just trying to say that for most people who probably move into these multi-unit buildings, they're not expecting to have a hotel room next door. They're hoping to have a community, people that they know, that they can talk to, if there's a problem, that there's some stability in the neighborhood. And I think that's really part of what we're getting at is also these multi-unit properties have other people living there. And so we're trying to also recognize the rights of those tenants and neighbors. And I'll just leave it there.

Yeah, go ahead.

Thank you for that explanation, Steve. I guess clarification. I'm looking at the ordinance, and this 30-19-4, B3. And it says, I remember reading this, a host may rent no more than one dwelling unit or other habitable space as an STR on the same property at the same time. So does that mean that, say, an owner owns a duplex? They have a tenant living upstairs, and they live downstairs, or vice versa. Does that mean that at any one time there can only be one STR rather than two?

That's how we wrote it. OK. Yeah. And so we're being very strict on that.

OK. OK. I just wanted to make sure I understood that was what the intent was. OK.

Yes, Board Member Hsu. This is more of a question also. So I appreciate the explanation on the ADU law and understand that it can get very complex as they add more housing laws. It just gets more and more complex. And so I understand the approach of just saying they're prohibited. But I think it would be helpful to just include some language as just a guidepost for the public. Because I understand internally, staff probably has their notes. And they know like, oh, yeah, it says this. But we flag it and blah, blah, blah. We do our own due diligence to figure out. But I think for somebody buying a new property, they see this and they go, oh, that won't work for us. But actually, in reality, it might work. But it's very complicated. And I know it's complicated. It'd be hard to write something in here would just make it a little more clear. And I even, you know, your example of the cottage built in 1908, and then maybe in 2005 they started using it as a B&B. I don't know when B&B came along, but just say 2005 or whatever. But then they didn't get legalized as an ADU in 2019, but they've been doing it for like 10, 15 plus years. Are we now going to say you can't do this anymore? I don't know what the state law says, but I think in that example, they should be allowed to continue doing it because they've been doing it for so long, despite their legalization later on. Anyways, I think my bigger comment slash question is I think it would be helpful to include some language in here just as a guidepost. for the public, that it's not some blanket ban. I mean, unless staff is like, look, there's only like five properties. We've done the analysis, and there's only like five properties in the city that fall under this. And so if that's why we're doing it, then I'd be fine. But I would imagine, just see by you showing me all these different examples, that there's probably ADUs in the city that we just don't even know about, that someone's lived in there forever, and maybe at some point they want an Airbnb out. and they would be confronted with this ordinance and be like, oh, I can't, but maybe they actually could.

Yeah, I'm thinking back. The former director, Andrew Thomas, was telling me a little bit about the history of ADUs in Alameda as well. I think he said that really there was an amnesty period already where people with these basement units or cottages that, The permitting history was a little uncertain. Maybe there was a record on file, maybe there wasn't. They were actually given an opportunity probably 15 years ago where the city really took the initiative and tried to bring people in and kind of just deal with it. So I think if someone were to come in now and try to legalize an ADU, I think we would do that other research first and try to show that, no, actually, it was built according to the code at the time. And, you know, we only had zoning since 1940, roughly. So, you know, prior to that, there was lots of development that happened, and we have Sanborn maps and other ways of documenting legal development that's, you know, that's okay. And we wouldn't try to legalize it under an ADU law, necessarily. So it wouldn't get knocked out just because of that. So I think it will affect probably a couple of hundred units citywide, not short-term rental units. I mean, probably, like you said, five short-term rental units that are technically ADUs, maybe 10. I don't know, but it doesn't seem like it's really that many.

Thanks.

I think it's probably more likely going to affect the single-family home where people own two homes in town or don't live in town at all.

Yeah. Great. Any other comments or feedback for Member Wink?

Yeah, well, I have a lot of comments. First, I would just echo Board Member Hsu's comment. I tend to agree that if there was some kind of secondary structure that predates ADU law but it later became more formally permitted, I would think that that should just kind of slide under and be allowed. I do think that we have a policy objective with ADUs, and that is to say, given our longstanding housing supply issues, that ADUs have been a way that we've been very, intentional about creating a new form of density in our existing neighborhoods. And we've also added on policy incentives such as waiving impact fees for ADUs. And that is all in service of creating more long term housing supply. That's not to say that ADUs are guaranteed to become long term housing, but I think that explicitly allowing them to be short term rental housing is certainly not in service of creating long term housing supply. Bigger picture comment, you know, I think a lot of the discussion on the workshop nights and tonight has focused on noise and nuisance questions, which I think are totally valid you know one of the comments that I made earlier on was I'm not sure that short-term rentals as a as a category of product naturally have more you know land use problems than then then they got then otherwise but I think that I think I'm happy to be proven wrong. I think a couple people have spoken up to say, well, look, if the owner or the host isn't here, we tend to see some nuisance issues crop up. But all that said, to me, I think noise and nuisance are still not the primary issue here I'm just going back to long-term housing supply we do have that as a primary policy objective and that is codified in the housing elements that the city adopted as as Steve has pointed out already and so we are here to pick that thread up following the adoption of the housing element we are I think just I'm not sure if you said this Steve but you said it earlier in our prior workshops we're probably among the last of the cities in the in at least the East Bay or the or the in the vicinity to to be adopting this and you know over the years since Airbnb is has really become popular Here and across the globe, I think we've seen a lot of ordinances regulating short-term rentals. And so I think, one, the market's kind of used to seeing them now. It should be. It shouldn't be a surprise. And two, I think, if anything, we're kind of aligning with the market at this point. I think where we were going with our workshops was good. I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out. I did think the structure of hosted, semi-hosted, and un-hosted was helpful for us to start thinking about the kinds of short-term rentals that we wanted to regulate or allow or disallow but ultimately I agree the nomenclature was starting to throw us off I do think the new structure is a lot more easy to understand so I'm glad that we found that precedent and we're following in its footsteps I I think I have a couple more comments. I guess as a parent in a family that travels, I am sympathetic to the notion that larger homes are helpful. But again, I think we're I don't think we're going to be under any illusion that passing a short-term rental ordinance is going to boost our housing supply significantly. We're not looking for a silver bullet. But in many of the conversations that we have here, we are looking for important but incremental steps to support and shore up our long-term housing supply. So I think here we're looking to make a balance between supporting long-term affordability for people in the Bay Area and also allowing kind of a reasonable flexibility with people's properties, recognizing that being able to rent out your home or your second unit on your property supports long-term affordability for homeowners. So I have some kind of micromanagement type of comments that I think relate to how it relates to, I think, this concern about primary residents. And so understanding that I think we're largely kind of focused on the honor system backed up by, I think, complaints or enforcement. I do want to, I think, one, reinforce that it's not so much about showing showing documents that that have your address on on them right the primary point is that that is your primary residence so I think that there's you know we want something that maybe is like an affidavit where you actually say that and then the documents are supporting it's not that the documents are primary if that makes sense the second thing is um and i kind of alluded to this in my question is i don't know about i don't know whether multiple warnings make sense in the context of somebody misleading about whether a short-term rental is their primary residence so i do think that you know if somebody did that and it was found to be untrue then i think we should recognize as a city that that application was made in bad faith And so it should really be a one-tier warning. I don't think that they should get multiple chances at that. The second thing is, I think that you noted, or the proposal was that if If an applicant loses eligibility for their short-term rental for whatever reason that they aren't able to reapply for 180 days, is that right? So I think I think at least in the context of a sort of false primary residence scenario, that it shouldn't just be the applicant that's not eligible to reapply for 80 days. But in addition, the property in question should also be barred from being a short-term rental for 180 days, regardless of who applies. I think those are all my comments.

Thank you. Board Member Hahn?

Yeah, just taking time to now express my thoughts on this. First of all, I think this is a well-crafted ordinance. It's a nice balance between recognizing that we need some enforcement authority for the bad players that happen, and unfortunately that does happen, but also recognizing that, quite honestly, the vast majority of short-term rentals are not a problem. So you don't want to, like, over-regulate and have staff spend a lot of time. But at the same time, you want the teeth to be able to enforce if you need to. I think it covers a good balance, like I said. So I'm ready to support the ordinance. I do have some suggestions to take into consideration, some of them supporting what other board members say. Even though it's complicated, it does seem to me that if an ADU was grandfathered in as not truly an ADU pre-2017 and 2020, It is basically grandfathered. I know that creates complications from an administration standpoint. But it seems that they're technically not an ADU under the state law. So maybe they should be exempt. I do agree. with Board Member Wang about the violation, I mean, to me, the multiple warnings come in for operational issues, you know, noise, you know, they're having a big party or other operational violations of the standards. Those are subject to warnings. But if it turns out the person no longer lives there, you know, it could be they may have represented it correctly, but then they moved out or whatever, then it should, on automatically be terminated as the ability to operate an ADU. One comment, just responding to a comment from the audience, and I don't know where this is. I was looking for it. There was a comment that if there's, say, an ADU, not an ADU, a living space that might have a different address on the same property. It's not an ADU. Maybe clarifying if it's a different address. That doesn't apply to the exception. And I don't know where that is and whether that's actually correct or not, but if you could check on that. The other... Other comment, and this has to do with the definitions in the ordinance. I do agree, and I'll throw it out here for consideration. There was a comment about the local contact, meaning the person that needs to respond within 60 minutes. It does seem to me that it's fair to require that that local contact reside in Alameda. So that's one of my suggestions. I don't think that would be too prohibitive. Otherwise, you could have someone living up in Lake Tahoe say, I could respond within 60 minutes or whatever. So that's one suggestion. The other suggestion is the definition of primary residence. I'm open to the idea of placing some type of time limit, like you need to, you know, A permanent resident meaning you're living there at least six months out of the year. And also, since we are allowing tenants to host STRs, maybe it requires also providing evidence of a long-term lease on the property, too. That way it's not just someone like rents it for three months or whatever. And then a final amendment suggests, and this is what brought up under that item three, it might be good to clarify the issue about only one STR rental on, say, a multi-unit building. Because when I read that, it says a host. That could be interpreted as on the property, you have a property owner and you have a tenant. So that means both of them. can serve as a host. But it might be good to clarify that so there's not any confusion down the road. Otherwise, I think staff did an excellent job with crafting the ordinance, listening to all the furious feedback from board members and the public, and coming up with an ordinance that, to me, is clear but not overly complicated. So using Santa Monica as an example sounds like it was the right way to go.

Thank you. I'll just add, we actually are more liberal than Santa Monica. They prohibit the vacation rentals. They define it and then prohibit it.

Oh, OK.

So we're at least allowing it.

Yeah, that's one clarification from the comments is that We're allowing both, I'll use the term, hosted and unhosted. The only requirement is that it needs to be the primary residence. So for the person that mentioned they have a large home that they would like to rent out, that's perfectly fine. You could be away from that residence. You just have to be the primary resident of that house.

And Board Member Su?

I just had a follow-up question on the ADU prohibition. You mentioned that the city already bans the use of ADUs for STRs. So that's like in another section of the city's code. So then for existing, I guess it's possible that there are some existing ADUs that are being used as STRs technically in violation of the city's code at this time, or has it just been basically unregulated?

Yeah, I think if we got a complaint, we would investigate it and it would be violating sort of the ADU section of the code since we don't currently have an SDR code.

Okay. I'll also point out that when you all updated your ADU ordinance, You did make an amendment to specify, to continue forward that language prohibiting ADUs from being rented less than 30 days. But then there was also a provision inserted that said unless otherwise authorized by this code. And the reason for that was we weren't sure how you were going to come down on this issue. So you do have some flexibility.

Yeah, and you read my mind on that because my next point was if we were going to put something in this ordinance to say, you know, unless otherwise prohibited, right, ADUs are prohibited, would we need to then go and modify that one? It sounds like we're okay. So I still think I would support, you know, kind of just bringing back to our conversation of the ADU ban, I would still support some language in here just to give the public a signpost. And I understand it probably doesn't end up being too many ADUs, but I think just to kind of, I think to the kind of overall comments about you know, if you're a potential, like, you know, buyer of this property or potentially thinking about moving here, like, just being able to know that and you're, you know, oh, you're looking at this section of the code, just seeing that signpost, I think, would be really helpful and not for people thinking that it's just a complete ban. So just a couple other comments. I wanted to just circle back on Board Member Wang's. comment about the primary residence requirement. I think he's really on point with that, and we may want to just, I think the way you, when you look at the way the definition is drafted right now, someone I could see arguing, saying, well, you know, I've provided, you know, I've got two registrations here, two registrations here, I've got my primary, even though at the end it says a person can only have one primary residence. So I would try to redraft is to say something along the lines of like basically what it says you know the usual place of their housing you know which shall be as shown by something where we're not emphasizing the registration as much but more as the registration as supporting supporting material so I also just had this thought of, I think this is Board Member Hom's comment of, you know, there are some people, and I think this is maybe not as common here, but where you have snowbirds where they spend, you know, six months here and then six months somewhere else throughout the year. You know, we might end up having those situations where they will still, it's almost like they have primary residences in two places if they're 50-50, and I guess... under this code. I think that will end up having to be, if we go this affidavit route, we're just going to have to make a call at the end of the day of what we're comfortable with. But I think in those kind of scenarios, it would not be the same as someone you know, like living here in Alameda and then buying a house and then registering their voter registration and their, you know, utility bill there and saying, well, I also live there. So, you know, I think that's the kind of issue that we are trying to address. And just to the board member's comment about the local host, I had the same thought of, like, why don't we just make it so that someone lives in Alameda? And I just, I tend to agree with that, but I also feel like Maybe it might be too restrictive. What if that person just lives in Oakland and San Leandro? Maybe the language is sufficient enough to say, look, they can respond. Even though, I mean, respond is so vague. But maybe it goes to the point that maybe we don't want to overregulate. So I'm a bit on the fence. on that language. But, yeah, I also, you know, I don't want someone to abuse it and be like, oh, well, you live in Sacramento, and that's enough. They can respond by text in 60 minutes. So maybe we do want to try and time that up a little bit. But overall, I agree. I think the Santa Monica model is a good model, and I appreciate staff's work on this and all the kind of input they've provided. Thank you.

Any other comments or feedback from board members? All right. Well, with that, I'll just share that I'm in agreement with my fellow board members. I think this was really thoughtfully put together by staff. I feel like this is a really challenging issue. I'm very sympathetic to members of the public that use short-term rental income part of their you know livelihoods and this is gonna be a big adjustment and I also think it's a fair point that I don't think you know we're not Santa Monica we're not San Francisco this isn't going to change the speculative market trajectory and I do think this is responsive to what we have articulated in the housing element and I do think this is a reflection of our values of how we want to have available homes for people to live in as their true home, like long-term housing. So for those reasons, I'm supportive of this draft. And I think a lot of the recommended amendments make a lot of sense. So support all my fellow board members with that. And I think a lot of this comes down to intent. So I don't know if we want to solve for that now and do a little bit more deliberation, or if staff feels that they have good direction from the board. I am curious if we could bring it back to you all, if you have any follow-up questions for us.

Yeah, I do. I wanted to ask you all, in terms of this question around legacy operators who are already up and running, don't have any complaints, depend on the income. We had an amnesty period. It could be extended or it could be more indefinite. Like if you can show that you've been listing your property and we look and we've never had any complaints, maybe those people are OK. And we're really just trying to regulate those future conversions, which we do under the eviction clause as well. We're trying to keep people in their homes. And so there are those protections already, and we're recognizing those. As you were saying, are we trying to now open up more of these units as rentals, or are we trying to solve a nuisance problem? Because if they're not a problem, then maybe the legacy operators could continue. And I just wanted to run that by you, because I heard a little bit of concern among the people who are here.

I'm not sure I'm following, because my thing is that you're So obviously there are existing ADUs that are operating as short-term rentals, and I see you're saying those have been fine.

Actually, I'm not talking about ADUs because those are already regulated, but more like the person who owns two homes and lives in one and rents the other as a short-term rental. Are we trying to tell that person they can no longer do that, and if they come in for a permit, they're going to get in trouble? Or if we find out about them, we'll have to... pursue them for enforcement? Or are they okay if they come in for a permit, we can say, great, you know, you can, if you can show that you've been doing it for X, you know, time period, like you've already been doing it for six months or a year or two years, and we haven't gotten any complaints, maybe there's a solution to that.

I mean, I did just have kind of a similar thought. I mean, because I did receive some comments of folks who have been doing this for a while. And I would generally be supportive of that idea. And I think there's that question of, like, how long, kind of this cut-off point. But the other thing, I wonder if this... Is this... Like, could somebody make an argument of, like... I'm being treated disparately because I'm trying to do this after the ordinance was put in place. I own a second home and I want to do this, but just because of past this date, it's no longer allowed. I think this is a good idea, but I just wonder if someone could make that argument to get that kind of permission struck down.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's always the case when you pass a new rule.

It's kind of a key item. State law prohibits STRs for ADUs. So part of the, to me, a key guiding point is, is this an ADU under state law? However you define that, I'm not saying that's a clear definition. But state law specifically prohibits short-term rentals for quote-unquote ADUs. So as long as it's outside of that state definition, then I'm open to allowing the short-term rentals.

for the legacy versions or going forward? Because that's the real cutoff here, is it has to be your primary residence.

Yes, the question is, are any of those legacy ADUs covered under the state law prohibition?

I think ADUs is like a legacy unit, right?

Or short-term rental.

Yeah, legacy short-term rental that are not ADUs. Yes, correct.

Yeah. Because if they're not ADUs, then there's not a state law issue, right? It's only if they are classified as ADUs. Am I missing something?

Right. It's not the, I think what Steve is asking is if there's an owner and they're operating, let's say, a single family home that's next door as their ADU under the ordinance as it's written, they would no longer be allowed to do so, right? I think Steve is saying, do we want to provide some kind of amnesty program for people who have been good actors? Is that, am I? Well said.

Yeah, I mean, I'm open to that as long as it doesn't violate state law.

Yeah. And I think, yeah, I agree with the consensus that we're coming to. And I think the question for me is how long have they been proving to be a good standing STR business owner, I guess? I don't know. It seems like one year maybe is not enough. evidence, so I think that's my question. I think you were getting at that, Board Member Hsu, so I don't know if it's like, I don't know, two years, three years, but yeah.

I would support a year. I think that would be reasonable. Me too.

Okay, bye.

I will support that. That makes sense to me where someone has come to depend on it and

I would say, though, that if that permit, let's say this grandfathered permit gets revoked, I would say they don't get to come back and redo it.

Any other Clarifications or I think that would be helpful as you're putting together this recommendation.

Mr. Buckley Where did you land on the

Response Whether living in Alameda or not, yeah Maybe I mean we say 60 minutes Yeah, okay that just throw this out there because I you know, I don't have a problem with Alameda, but I can understand Maybe some more flexibility. I mean they need to be able to respond to Maybe on-site as well as by phone within 60 minutes? Might that be? Because within an hour, you could live in Oakland or San Leandro. But there might be a case where you want them to be able to be on the premises. So I throw that out as a suggestion, because I agree Alameda might be a little bit too restrictive.

I would support that recommendation.

Okay, so is it live in Alameda or be able to respond on site within 60 minutes?

I think it's be able to respond within 60 minutes, including arrive in person, right?

Yeah.

Have that ability to arrive in person within 60 minutes.

And I assume if they live in Alameda, they can respond in 60 minutes, right? Of course, unless there's like massive traffic. But I won't go there. I know.

Yeah. Does that work for you too, Board Member Wang?

Sure.

Okay.

Thank you. I think we got it.

Okay. Great. Any other? Yes, Board Member Hummel.

Oh, no, I don't. I was just going to make a motion.

Oh, okay. Yes. Go ahead and make a motion.

Well, let me pull up the staff report and make sure what you're asking us to do. Okay. So I make a recommendation that we recommend to the city council to adopt short-term rental regulation of an ordinance as recommended by staff with the revisions discussed tonight by board members and further finding that the ordinance is exempt from CEQA.

I will second.

Okay. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you so much members of public both here in person online for all your contributions And with that we'll move on to which an item 5b which is a workshop on commercial zoning and

So we are here to provide an overview of the downtown commercial zoning code update for Park Street and Webster Street, which are Alameda's two main street corridors. Our project goals are to reduce storefront vacancies, reduce regulations that create unnecessary burden for new businesses, modernize, clarify, and simplify the zoning code, build flexibility in the code to allow for emerging business types, all while maintaining the active pedestrian-oriented district that it was originally envisioned for. To understand the potential impact of these changes, we analyzed the commercial building stocks in both areas. Observations include that Park Street contains around 1 million square feet of commercial space, roughly twice the amount of square footage of other East Bay business improvement districts. Retail and restaurant uses make up nearly 50% of commercial square footage within each district. And if we include office and mixed-use buildings or square footage, that percentage ramps up to around 85%. And over half of all commercial buildings are 4,000 square feet or smaller. In looking at the vacancies specifically, we see that commercial vacancies rates are sitting at approximately 12% on Webster Street and 7% on Park Street. Staff categorized these vacant spaces into four groups. The first two represent the most common vacancies and are expected to benefit from the proposed zoning updates. The remaining two would likely require more targeted intervention beyond zoning changes. And as for our process, staff held three workshops with representatives from the Webster Street and Park Street Business Association, planning board members, and other key stakeholders to help shape the recommendations. Following the study, staff will return to the planning board in September and then the city council in fall for adoption. And with that, I'll pass it over to Henry for the recommendations.

great thank you uh caesar caesar with the economic development department i was just going to ask yeah thank you give me a little overview of what we've gone through so far in our effort and some of our goals and so um i'm going to go ahead and oh sorry henry dong with the planning building transportation department and i'm going to go over um Some topics that we would hope to hear back from the board and the community on. So first off, I'd like to express my appreciation for the working group that we had with the DAPA and WAPA stakeholders, and then Board Member Wang and Member Ruiz. A lot of the insight that they gave us in those meetings will help to shape how we approach this project. And so I guess the question here is how do we streamline the code and the process to help to reduce some of the vacancies that Cesar was talking about? And so staff is recommending mainly three approaches. First is to consolidate the list of permitted uses where possible and move the the code format to a more modern format similar to the Alameda Point District and the North Park Street District where they use more general terms. And then number two, consider removal of requirements for use permits for certain uses where it's possible. we really want to reserve the use permit process for those types of uses that we want to review on a case-by-case basis or uses that we want to implement conditions of approval to because I guess the use permit process includes a public hearing and that usually can add about roughly three to 12 months worth of processing time to a project, which will also create some certainty for prospective tenants that may be choosing between a location in Alameda or a location in another city. So these are some of the aspects to consider. And so we think it's worth taking a second look at some of these uses that we're going to be talking about. The other thing to consider is accessibility, because we have some uses that have limitations from being located on the ground floor or actually prohibited from being on the ground floor. But in Webster Street and Park Street, we have a lot of older buildings that may not have elevators, and so accessibility is another thing that we're thinking about. And then lastly, we want to take a look at clarifying and modernizing the code. The first item to talk about here is list uses, not shops, right? We want to consolidate the dozens of retail shops and personal services type uses all into like two main definitions, which is general personal services and general retail sales. By listing individually, it really creates kind of a for those uses that aren't specifically used listed in the code. And it also requires that staff make similar determinations if we're going to allow those types of uses. And so it makes sense to group them into general terms to make things more flexible and clear. So when we're talking about retail use, just about most of the retail uses are allowed by right on Park and Webster Street. There are a few uses that we would like to take a second look at. And one of those is retail used goods, which actually require a use permit in the CC district. State law states that cities must treat these thrift store uses the same as new retail uses, retail store uses. And so we're proposing to eliminate the distinction between new and used good sales. And so I guess this one's more kind of like a FYI, but we'd like to hear your thoughts on that. The next retail you'd like to take a look at is grocery stores and convenience stores. So both of these can require a use permit in both districts. But based on our experience with the use permit process and hearings, usually the topics that come up in discussion have to deal with alcohol beverage sales or late night hours operation. And so we'd like to hear your thoughts on allowing these uses by right if we pull the alcohol sales and hours operations out of the equation and require use permits for those aspects. And then we'd also like to hear your thoughts on if there's any I guess, accessory type uses of alcohol sales that we could consider as by right, such as the sale of just beer and wine and not distilled spirits, or limiting the square footage of the area for alcohol sales. So, general personal services, in general, these, it's kind of mixed on the current regulations on whether they're allowed by right and, you know, require a use permit. I think in general we think that watch hospitals, coin laundry shops, and barber shops should be allowed by right. There are a few current personal service uses that require a use permit that we'd like to hear your thoughts on. One is being salons actually require a use permit on Webster Street but not on Park Street. And so we think that it should be consistent across the board. And then upholstery shops currently require a use permit and would like to hear if you guys think that that should be by right. Some other personal service uses that we'd like to What are your thoughts on our massage and tattoo businesses? Currently massage is allowed by right on the upper floor, but not on, but requires the use permit on the lower floor. And then tattoo businesses are not allowed on the ground floor. And so I'd like to hear your thoughts on allowing these by right, considering that we do have a massage technician permit process that also has background check process for that. And then we also feel like the tattoo regulations might be an outdated perception of tattoo studios when they're considered more of an artistic type of use nowadays. And then the last personal service use we'd like to take a look at is gyms. Apparently gyms require a use permit on the ground floor, and we think that these uses could be allowed by right. So I'm going to hear your thoughts on that. Offices is the next topic that we want to take a look at. Currently, North Park Street requires a use permit on the ground floor. And the CC district requires a use permit if it occupies the front 50% of the ground floor on Park or Webster Street and permitted elsewhere. Our thought process here is that a lot of the smaller offices could be allowed by right on the ground floor because usually those types of offices, like dentist offices and that type of thing, have more activity. And then offices over 4,000 square feet we could require a use permit for. And then we propose to remove the 50% ground floor requirement. And then the next topic here is medical facilities. North Park Street regulates health clinics. The CC District regulates medical facilities. But we don't really quite have a definition for these. And so our proposal would be to basically require a use permit for inpatient medical facilities and then regulate outpatient services similar to offices based on size. And then we have commercial recreation as our next topic we'd like to hear your thoughts on. both require use permits in both the CC and the North Park Street District. We're proposing to update the definition to include more experiential type uses such as immersive experiences and And so we're proposing to allow by right instead of requiring a use permit. And so we'd like to hear your thoughts on that. billiards is a form of commercial recreation that we'd like to include as a by-right with the definition, but there are some outdated regulations that prevent the billiards from being located in the downtown districts and also prohibits minors from attending these facilities. And then During our working group, I guess the reoccurring conversation was about window transparency, visibility into these facilities. maintaining vibrancy for the active storefront, and so we're proposing a window transparency policy that requires that the first five feet into a window be visible, not blocked out, and then we have exceptions for those uses that have some privacy considerations. And then lastly, some of the conversations in our working group talked about increasing the standard business hours to allow for those businesses to operate early in the morning. And so we have a proposal for increasing the standard business hours from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. and then require a use permit to open outside of those hours. And then we have an additional option to consider about on Friday and Saturdays allowing businesses to operate until 12 AM. And so the first step that we'd like is to hear from you guys tonight and the community about some of our topics that we have on the list or any other topics that you guys think we should consider. And then we'll take that back. It's into August when we're writing our draft amendment, and then return to you guys in September. And so that concludes our presentation.

Wonderful. Yeah, thank you so much. Great presentation, and I'll bring it to the board for clarifying questions for staff. Yes, board member Suu.

Yep, thanks for the presentation. It was very interesting. One question I had was, so for the health clinic, or I think inpatient versus outpatient, and the staff report says there's a definition of health clinic right now are we proposing to keep that definition and say that that is going to be basically for outpatient services and we're going to allow those to be by right within these districts Or is health clinic going to still be a separate thing, and we're going to separate out inpatient, outpatient, inpatient, outpatient services and say, yes, outpatient services are allowed by right, but outpatient or inpatient is still going to need a use permit?

Yeah, I think our goal is to clarify that, how there's health clinics listed in, one district and medical facilities in the district. So we wanted to kind of clarify the definition for that as one as outpatient and one as inpatient. and then require a use permit for inpatient uses. And then we were looking at regulating outpatient similar to just offices in general, which would be based on the sizes, yeah.

Okay, yeah, that's helpful. And that makes sense, I think. Because I was looking at it, I think the follow-up question, as I was looking at this definition of health clinic, which is a facility, whether public or private, principally engaged in providing services for health, maintenance, diagnosis, treatment of human diseases, pain, or injury. And I wondered if this is, like, I could see that definition being different from, like, kind of more of a traditional, like, medical treatment definition. Like, the way the definition seems drafted seems a bit kind of like, you know, maybe it's like a place where you can go to get, like, herbal treatments or, you know, I know now, modern days, people are like, doing like, you know, peptide injections or something like that. Like, is that what health clinic is supposed, is that supposed to be different from like, you know, inpatient? Or how are we thinking, like, is there an intent to like, have health clinic be different from like outpatient, like traditional medical services, I guess?

Yeah, I... I think what we are imagining is trying to separate, I guess, your typical dentist's office and maybe a walk-in clinic versus hospitals. That was kind of our main goal there. And so, yeah, it might be revising the definition of health clinics to kind of make that distinction there.

Yeah, yeah, and that might still fall under, like, personal services, maybe. The other question I had, and I was just trying to find this quickly, I didn't look earlier, but... How is, I'm sure there's a separate use for cannabis or marijuana dispensaries, right? I just haven't seen them in the definition, but that's totally regulated differently and probably has its own process that is not really, is that gonna be addressed, I guess, in this whole process, or has it kind of already got its own comprehensive scheme?

Yeah, we're not proposing any changes to that. It has a whole section in the ordinance dedicated to it. And then there's also a section outside of the zoning ordinance that regulates it as well. So yeah, we weren't proposing to . Got it.

Yeah, that's a very comprehensive state law process. OK, I think the other question I had is, I think in one of the first few board meetings I did, there was a church that had to get a use permit, I think, on Park. And I remember that was like, oh, maybe something we might revisit later on. Was that discussed in the work group at all in terms of how to deal with religious facilities? And how are we maybe proposing to handle them or to address them maybe in this update?

I guess that wasn't a topic that we covered too much in the working group, I don't recall. But I don't think we were trying to streamline the process for that particular use. We were going to leave it as a use permit. But we definitely would love to hear your thoughts on that.

Yeah, I think I would agree. And I think there was maybe... Maybe there was something in here about which ones will be changing to use permits, but yeah, I agree that should be the, I think my comment was along the lines of there is this, you're going to be streamlining all these uses onto general retail, general personal, and I would support religious facility being one of the ones where you call out specifically as requiring a use permit. Okay, thanks.

If I may, I think or remember how I was going to jump into, we don't call it religious facilities. And so it's any kind of sort of community assembly. And so we have the Elks Club next door. We do have a number of churches. And then there's other things that we're actually talking about in terms of places where people might have just receptions and parties. It's sort of an assembly use. whether it's for members or guests or for the community at large. So those are actually all now in one definition. And I think what Henry is considering is, should those remain use permits in these downtown districts? And I think we recommend yes, because they are a larger gathering with different kinds of dynamics. Great, thanks.

Thank you for explaining that It is something that I think not should be taking a look at because I could see small assembly uses just as you define general retail sales and general personal services that may be assembly uses that are relatively smaller in size could be outright permitted. But once they exceed a certain size or occupancy level, perhaps that triggers a use permit. But anyway, that's not a question, so I should be asking a question. So one of the other questions I have, and this comes up sometimes, upholstery shops. They vary from being very retail-oriented to be almost like industrial-oriented. Does the zoning ordinance make a distinction between when a upholstery shop is a retail use versus a more light industrial type of use? Because it seems like as a retail use that the staff recommendation seems appropriate, but you kind of want to make sure it doesn't transition to a more industrial operation. But just a question, is there a distinction?

Yes, there's two listings for upholstery. One is small upholstery shops exclusive of refinishing and other furniture repair or manufacturing. And then there's upholstery shop exclusive of refinishing and other furniture repair or manufacturing. So it sounds like it distinguishes that out in terms of manufacturing.

So the manufacturing use is currently not allowed in these commercial districts? Right.

Yeah.

OK. Then I have a question. Can you explain why gyms requires a use permit?

Good question. I don't know the history to the original reasons why the zoning was rezoned that way, but I imagine that maybe it's based on them being operating in early hours and possibly maybe where there might have been concerns about them being located where retail normally is located.

So if something like a gym's got proposed, what approval is required?

So let's see. I think in North Parshey District, if it's located on the ground floor... I think it requires a use permit. And then athletic clubs and health clubs require a use permit in the CC district.

Okay. Okay. Well, I agree that's an area that might be looked at to see because, you know, it's a restaurant use from what I can tell. Then I have a question about... Oh, sorry.

I was talking about like health, like gyms as in like personal training gyms.

Oh, I thought you said Jim's Coffee Shop. Sorry. Okay. All right. All right. My misunderstanding. Sorry. Yeah. I'm getting hungry. Maybe that's it. They have some good breakfast. Yeah. I like Jim's Coffee Shop. Anyway. All right, thanks for clarifying. But since you mentioned gyms, I did have a question about that. Gym S with a G-Y-M. So in the staff report, you come up with some generalized definition of general retail sales and general personal sales, which I think is a good direction. In the following paragraph, you note that 30,000 square foot limitation distinguishes general retail sales. So the question is, are you considering a similar kind of limitation of what triggers a use permit for personal services? Because the only one in that listing that seems like it might be quite large is the gymnasium, the athletic club. So is that maybe something that that limit would also, you're thinking staff, that might also apply to You know, the rare instance of a really large personal service like a health club or a gym.

I think we're interested in hearing if that's something the board would be interested in. Right now, we're kind of just using an existing large format retail requirement that's in the CC district. And so that's where that comes from. But yeah, we could certainly apply that to other uses as well.

It seems like the general concern when I was reading the committee notes, it was a concern about these really large uses, whatever they are, might kind of disrupt the vitality of that retail store, which kind of gets to my next questions related to window transparency. You know, sometimes these really large uses, they want to close up their windows for, you know, logical reasons and the proposals is that anywhere there's any window you need to maintain transparency for at least five feet is there any requirement current requirement that requires a minimum amount of transparency along the street frontage so that

We do have for new buildings in North Park Street and Alameda Point a very similar policy. It talks about transparency at least five feet. And so what we're doing here is proposing to take that policy and apply it to new tenants in existing buildings.

Yeah. No, I get that. I guess my question is, is a lot of cities for their ground floor retail in a downtown or active retail district, they want to maintain a minimum of transparency windows rather than having, you know, solid wall for, say, 30, 50 feet or so. So does our ordinance have addressed that at all?

Not currently.

Not currently? Yeah. Okay, okay. And then my final question is parking. You know, I know that the purpose of this ordinance revision, which I think conceptually makes a lot of sense, is try to remove the complexity and help streamline approval of retail uses along Park and Webster, which makes sense to me. Parking is usually one of the key issues that is... causing a lot of tenants or developers to be able to move in. What are the parking requirements for along this, along both Webster and Park? I remember parking became an issue that we had to do a variance for a use of it but is that something that's also being looked at is whether we want to amend the parking unless we don't currently have no parking requirements or minimal yeah currently for parking Webster shoot we just have maximum parking requirements okay and so no minimums no yeah no okay okay okay that's good thanks for answering okay thank you

And just, oh, go ahead, please.

Henry, don't we have a 30% transparency objective standard? Is that just for residential?

Oh, yeah, you might, yeah.

I think we have something similar to what you were asking, either lineal feed or area of the wall. We do have some standards sort of buried in the code of our objective standards and something like 30% of the wall area.

Okay, good. That's good to know. Yeah.

And just a friendly reminder to try to speak within three inches of the mic, because it might be hard for maybe folks online. Great. Board Member Wang, did you have any clarifying questions?

I do, but I think I can save them for the comment period of our item.

Okay, you'll fold it in or layer it in.

They're kind of comment-y questions. Yeah.

Okay. All right. And... Yeah, I don't know. I'm debating of even asking my question. But why not? I was looking at the staff survey of the vacant units. And I don't know. I was just hoping for a little bit more narrative on the stalled projects and the unmotivated property owner. Yeah, I understand this isn't exactly responsive to the discussion at hand, but I think it just could be helpful to know.

Sure. One second. So a lot of the reasons why some of the buildings are vacant is because they're old buildings. I think WABA and DABA are 1940s buildings, most of them. So they require a lot of building upgrades, which may not be able to They require a lot of building upgrades. They also have our uses that are not necessarily compatible or very dominant at this point. So they require a lot of major infrastructure upgrades just to kind of get them to be even leased. So therefore, it takes a long time, or it requires a lot of capital for that to happen. Many people are not willing to do that for a small plot of land. For the unmotivated property owners, those are individuals who own the building, and we've contacted them. We're like, hey, we want to help you lease your space. And they just do not respond. So those are a lot harder to fill.

But luckily there's few of them but but they are the ones that kind of You tend to see and and they are like those properties that have been vacant for like five ten plus years That really become my source And like with those ones that require like infrastructure upgrades Like the thought that maybe they could pass on some of those expenses to the tenant like once

maybe find one or it's like oh we have to do that upfront before I don't know or is that depend on the negotiations I guess yeah I mean I think it's it's dependent on like how it's structured a tenant can like start renting and then decide that he needs to do all these infrastructure changes but for I'm thinking There was one building where they bought a property. They wanted to make it into a restaurant. Because of the occupancy, they required a second entrance, and the building was not able to hold that, and therefore they just had to abandon the property. So it depends on the property owner can do it to then either make it easier to lease or then the tenant can establish a business and then figure out what he needs and then figure out if he can or cannot do it.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you entertaining me. Great. All right. I think that's all our questions then. Should we open it up to public comment?

I don't have any speaker slips, but if there's anybody online that wishes to speak on this item, please go ahead and raise your hand. Not seeing any hands.

okay great um and with that uh we'll close public comment and bring it back to the board again this is a workshop so um uh we'll continue uh the discussion that will eventually inform these amendments but would anyone like to start with any feedback uh yeah board member wang

um yeah generally i think supportive of staff's recommendations they all tend to make a lot of sense to me i just have a couple questions more in the vein of understanding i think the mechanics of how we're proposing to alter and streamline the ordinance so just to i think play back I think the top line edit that you're proposing is for uses that are permitted by right you're basically Consolidating collapsing all of that into basically two big categories retail general retail and personal uses And then the second thing that we're doing is we're taking some of the uses that currently require use permits and we're kind of upgrading them and saying, we're not going to require use permits of you anymore. That fits like a small selection of the uses that currently require use permits, but not all of them. some of the uses that currently require use permits will still live on that list and still require use permits for example community assembly like we were just talking about earlier right okay that that's um helpful for me to just understand i think how the i think the lists in our that were described in our staff report work um but then i think there's There is, I think, a category of uses that are currently permitted by right, which don't, I think, then get described in the new regime. And the one that stood out to me was hotel. A hotel is, I think, not a personal service, right? OK, Steve says no. So in this new regime that we're thinking about, hotels would not be permitted by right, and they're not going to get downgraded to it. Conditional use permit at least not they haven't they haven't been discussed explicitly as something requiring a conditional use permit so just flat I guess just it's a question of what about uses that used to be permitted by right and Don't fit retail and personal services Thank you for the question, I guess like I should kind of clarify that what we're presenting tonight are kind of just a

the selection of topics that we were seeing your feedback on. But it doesn't necessarily, I guess, encompass everything that we're planning. But so... I think general retail definition and general personal service definitions are a couple of general definitions that we're working on. But we might also have some other proposals for you guys when we come forward with the amendment in September.

I think what you're capturing is that there are lots of other things that we're just not talking about tonight. Either we're not suggesting any changes or we just haven't gotten to that yet. I'd also point out, I think there's a third bucket of things that we're looking at tonight, which is those things that are inconsistent between Park and Webster and North Park. And we're trying to... make those internally consistent because they are on currently in the same zoning district so but historically those business districts or those those property owners merchants neighbors had different opinions about things and so we made little carve outs and we're trying to do away with those carve outs

Yeah. I mean, generally, I think that the retail and personal services, I think, paradigm works. And my intent in kind of asking these questions is just to say, like, what about this? So I have a couple of those. So a hotel was one of them as an example. I think something that came up in workshop was, you know, I heard kind of a general interest in artist studios and artist galleries, so I flagged that as maybe a question of how that would be thought about or treated as well. And then the last one on my list is offices, which I think you're proposing as buy right at 4,000 or under right now. And so I think my comment there is I'm generally supportive of that. I do wonder whether a locational factor can come into play here. I think that I recall that something that came up in workshop was, hey, are offices maybe a little bit better suited off the main corridor on kind of the side streets? And I do think that having offices on, say, a Santa Clara is a little more conducive to maintaining that main drag for retail. So I bring that up as a suggestion to think about. I think I'm going to make a comment that's unrelated to all of this, which also goes back to members whose, you know, I had the same, I had the same, the same light bulb went off for me because it was also one of my first hearings with the storefront church. And I went back to that one and I think that when we granted that conditional use permit, we had asked for them to come back within a year for us to review again. And so we don't have to talk about it here. I'm just asking whether that happened and maybe I wasn't here. It hasn't happened.

I don't know. I don't know for sure.

Something to come back to another time.

Yeah, I'll just go through real quickly and Comment on the list of items staff mentioned first of all, I think the direction staff is heading towards to try to clean up probably some outdated obsolete Provision of the zoning code to be consistent what what I see in other cities makes a lot of sense I think the definitions who came up with this what I see in a lot of cities, too. Also, what you just commented on, Steve, about internal consistency between the commercial districts makes a lot of sense. I could just see over the years certain things happen and no longer really make sense. And that would make it simpler for staff and applicants, too, that there's not all these special rules in place for different segments or commercial areas. So the retail sale of used goods, yeah, I understand that's state law, so that's a good cleanup. Grocery stores and convenience stores. The ABC license issue, I think I would tie that to what are the different categories of ABC licenses that are allowed. There's a little bit more leniency towards this area. Certainly beer and wine at a grocery store, that shouldn't trigger a use permit. I don't even know, quite honestly, distilled liquors. I mean, if it's only limited to a small portion of a grocery store, to me, as long as you're not consuming it on site, what's the problem with someone buying a bottle of vodka? I'm just raising that as a question, not that I run into that problem myself. Commercial recreation, I do think taking a look at, since it is placing a use permit limit once it exceeds a certain size makes sense to me. So that's kind of my comment there. Most of the uses are relatively small. How long those would be outright permitted uses also makes sense to me. Totally agree with billiards. That's really an outdated kind of definition back when they were considered kind of slimy places. No longer the place of family-oriented billiard shops these days. And then personal service, all the items you mentioned in the list to allow them to be outright, I think that makes sense to me. Massage powders are regulated elsewhere by the police department, so I think there's good controls for that. Tattoo parlors are now kind of this outdated conception. Upholstery shops, you address that, as long as there's a clear distinction between what's a retail upholstery shop versus a more light industrial. Medical facilities, I think that I don't disagree with the staff's suggestion there. The offices, I do totally agree with Steph. After reading the explanation, it is a confusing section of the code to interpret. And I think using a 4,000, whether 4,000 is the right square footage. Some cities use lineal feet of street frontage as another guide. Not suggesting we need to add that in, but I see those two standards trying to address the same issue. Window transparency is great that we do have some minimum objective design standards for transparency for new uses. And I would say maybe major remodels, whatever triggers that, should maybe take a look at requiring buildings that may be a more solid wall. So you need to open up their walls a little bit, regardless of what the use is. And standard business hours, yeah, totally agree that the standardized ordinance, if that's missing in some of our code sections, then it should be included and be consistent across the board. And the noise standards, I know that's another area that staff is researching, so I won't comment on that. Anyway, so those are my quick comments of the issues that staff has outlined.

Yeah, I think just wanted to echo some of the comments both from running away and harm General I think supportive of the overall approach. I think especially with like commercial recreation things are just shifting and changing being able to adapt to You know new uses or recreation or services that are appearing I think super helpful and In terms of offices, I'm a bit on the fence. And I think maybe because this is a workshop, I don't need to come in one way or the other. But I think I'm torn between some use is better than just a vacant storefront. So maybe if we allow it to buy right, then if an office wants to be right on park, then great. That's better than it being vacant. But then I think on the flip side of it Either a taking away that space from something that could be more more active Or it's gonna be occupied by office that's kind of doesn't have as much of the kind of foot traffic as a As another type of more active use I think the other way I was thinking about this too is is you know demand like is there a Like are there small businesses and kind of organizations saying, we just can't find a place to locate in Alameda. You've got to open up Park Street or Webster so that we can get more business. I don't think that's happening. So if we wanted to go the other way and say, look, we want to maintain these spaces for for more active uses, like we could limit it to what Board Member Wayne was suggesting is to the side streets. Or I still like the kind of upper floor use permit, or upper floor is by right use permit on ground floor, but I understand that it's also confusing. Yeah, I'm a bit kind of on the fence on that one. But I do appreciate, I think, staff's approach and thinking. And I also think the kind of change to the window transparency will really help, and I think kind of supports that kind of creativity. I think often to the, I think it's called the Audiology Zone, I believe, which is near Signal Coffee. They always have like out front at least like a really nice painting or something that just helps to engage the space, even though it's really just a lobby area. I think those are all my comments right now, but I think staff has done a great job, and I appreciate the working group thinking through all of this, and I think it is interesting trying to streamline these things like billiard juices, which are, like, what my mom said, very outdated and not the kind of billiard halls we think of in the past. So, thanks.

Great. And I guess I'll go next. I'm at the last one to go, so yeah. Yeah, I agree with my fellow board members. And just to be honest on that note with the billiard, I do feel like I'm kind of like, old-fashioned or whatever because like I saw that and the tattoo parlor and I was like, I don't know but I And yeah times are changing And I I do think there are some safeguards in here to help with that I think what I keep going back to and it's like similar and this Vain Argument we're having with the offices is What's sticking with me is like, what does it look like at the street level? So I do, you know, if there is like a tattoo parlor, I appreciate the opportunity to have that window transparency to see like activity, like an ideally, I don't know, maybe there's like some kind of like little retail storefront in the front, like just some kind of activation. And then I would apply that also with office use, which I also was like, oh, I'm not sure if that would work. But I do see how it could work if the front part has, if it's an architecture office, really lovely renderings or models or just ways to engage the pedestrian. So I think that's the thing I keep going back to, the window transparency and the activation opportunities if we are going to make these streamlined uses. And then I guess the thing I keep going, I also had the question about the community assembly approval we did a while back and how this, What's the nexus of this new ordinance with what we approved back then and the way I think of it is and I I didn't I'm not prepared I didn't like read through the ordinance to like see how it would apply but It felt like it was like written as a loophole like even though it's a conditional use permit It's like oh well we can't really argue against this assembly use like, you know, we It kind of checks the box and so that's maybe where I go back I think remember home you mentioned like is that an opportunity for us to look at the definition of Assembly use and like what type of assembly use makes sense For our downtown streets because I'll be honest I am curious for the one-year anniversary You know look back because I'm not sure if that really was the best use for our downtown. So yeah, how do we want to maybe revisit even conditional use permits in a way that could be interpreted for the spirit of the ordinance, if that makes sense. So those are two of my high-level comments or feedback. Otherwise, I think this is great. Any other comments or feedback from board members for staff? Chicken heads? All right. And then was that helpful for you all? Yeah, that's great.

Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, we have... We also have our consultant, Heather Coleman. She's listening in, and so she's really great at synthesizing comments and moving us forward with the next tasks. So... Yeah, we'll be coming back to you.

Okay, great, yeah. Yeah, I also want to echo my thanks to staff and our subcommittee members for championing this. I know there's, like what we heard, there's a lot of externalities that's happening with downtowns, and I appreciate that we're taking the initiative to address what we can with how we can, so thank you. All right. I guess we'll go ahead and close agenda item 5B. And we'll move on to, yeah, so this is a workshop. It will go to city council. So go ahead and close agenda item 5B. Moving on to staff communications. Yeah. A couple items. Mm-hmm.

So just wanted to confirm, we're canceling the July 27th meeting and instead we'll be meeting on August 24th possibly for a special meeting. We have a local soccer team that wants to establish an outdoor performance space. And so we're working on that. And we have a few steps in the permit process that aren't necessarily just the city, but other agencies that need to comment before we can bring it to you. So we wanted to make sure we did all those things in the right order.

Yeah, I know staff sent an email to everyone. I'm not sure if everyone had a chance to see their inbox about that calendar change. But, yeah, so it sounds like I see nodding heads that that works for us. Great. Thank you.

Yep.

All right. And any public comments on staff communications?

Thanks. Don't see any commenters here.

Okay, great. We'll close that and move on to board communications. Seeing nothing from the board. And any public comments on that?

None.

Great. We'll close that. Any member of the public could speak on something that wasn't on tonight's agenda for three minutes. Do we have any speakers?

No speakers.

Great. It is 9.30 p.m. and we are adjourned.