Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

He's here. You're muted.

I'm here.

Crawford. We have a full commission.

Commissioner Nielsen, would you like to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? Yes. I have none. Item five, open forum. Is there anyone that wants to speak on any item that is not on the agenda this evening? Kelly A has his hand up online.

All right. Thank you. Some of you may read the San Francisco Chronicle. It's a newspaper. Just this morning, they had something that actually touches on your planning and zoning rules. One of the major planning and zoning rules that you have is called Measure D. And now the Board of Supervisors has launched a full frontal assault measure. on Measure D to weaken or overturn it. And the way you do these things in governments is through money. You have to go find money to pay for the political consultants and the polls and stuff. Now, they already had polls. They ran polls in the Tri-Valley and they didn't like the results. You know, they found out that the Tri-Valley really supports, the people there, they really love Measure D and they support what it's doing. So they said, no, we don't want that. So why don't we just run a poll for the whole county? See if we can get this thing overturned. Now, when this when in order to do that, the community development and say, well, we don't have extra money to go run your polls for you and hire political consultants and develop a political strategy to put a ballot measure on. uh to put something on the ballot so um the district one said oh that's fine no problem we're going to pay for that we'll give it to you out of give you the 150 000 you want that money we'll give it to you from our discretionary funds now what the san francisco chronicle this morning did was they went and they looked at those discretionary funds and their headline says Alameda supervisors give millions to connected nonprofits each year. The state may intervene. They're talking about grants to nonprofits. But it turns out that the grants to nonprofits are also coming from discretionary funds. So it's all the same thing. It's all coming from the discretionary funds inside the supervisor's offices. And I'll leave you with a couple of the most amazing things in the Chronicle story. They looked at some of that money like, you know, what is it called? fiscal management reward funds or whatever. They dug into it. And District 4 was handing out $120,000 a year from that. And in the last five years, District 1 was handing out $600,000 a year of those kinds of funds. So that's a 5X, that's five times more money somehow. That was interesting. uh... i don't know how that happens but it's right there in the newspaper and then uh... that the in the in the whole seven years that the chronicle looked at the uh... uh... district for handed out a total of eight hundred thousand dollars to all the nonprofits over seven years and uh... There was one recipient in District 1, which is a Livermore Science Center. They got $900,000. They got more money to one recipient this way than District 4 did to all recipients for seven years. Amazing, amazing story. San Francisco Chronicle by Kate Telerico. Wonderful story. Learn how your county works. Thank you.

OK, do we have any other speakers for open forum? We're moving on to item 6, field trip report. We have none. Item 7, committee reports. We have none. Item 8, approval of the minutes, May 4, 2026. Do we have any changes to the minutes? It looks like the minutes were redone in a more extended version, which we had asked for.

Didn't notice an error, Chair. Albert Lopez is the secretary.

He is the secretary, too.

The planning director?

Yeah, he's the planning.

Thank you for that clarification.

Any changes to the minutes? If not, is there a motion to approve?

Move.

Second.

I second.

Okay, moved by Commissioner Rocha, seconded by Commissioner Silva. Roll call vote, please.

I'm sorry, what was the request?

Sorry?

I asked for something.

Roll call vote.

Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm trying to multitask here. Commissioner Nielsen.

I'm abstaining from the vote.

Commissioner Zeis? Yes. Commissioner Silva? Yes. Commissioner Hernandez?

Abstain, I wasn't at the meeting.

Commissioner Rocha? Yes. Vice Chair Kelly?

Yes.

And Chair Crawford? Aye. All right, motion passes.

Okay, moving on to item 9 consent calendar. We have no items. Item 10, regular calendar. Item A, PLN 2024-109, site development review appeal of planning director's decision. Is the appellant here?

I believe the appellant is joining us online, Mr. Iannacone.

Okay. You have the staff report on this item?

Their hand up is in the... Just a second here to fire up the PowerPoint, please.

The applicant here for this application?

Applicant is online as well. Okay. Arbel Tume, the architect.

Okay.

Aubrey Rose, Alameda County Planning Department. So this is an appeal by Mr. Ivan Iacone of the Planning Director's decision dated March 31st, 2026 on case number PLN 2024-00109 at the property 720 Mockingbird Lane. This is an appeal of an approved site development review for a new home in an L combining zone. The application was originally submitted March 6, 2024. Revised design, which was ultimately approved, was submitted March 5th of this year. And the approval for site development review was to demolish an existing one-story home under a separate historic assessment review and to construct a two-story home on a 1.19-acre lot in a residential zone having a rural population. overlay or combining zone. The property owners, Eleanor and Kevin, may be joining us online as well. And the applicant who is with us online is Arbel, and he's the architect. General plan, East County area plan, low density residential. Zoning is R1 single family residence, L combining uses of a rural nature. and BE combining zone. The application was exempt from environmental review under CEQA as a section 15303 exemption for new facility. Just a brief timeline again, the application for SDR site development review was originally submitted March 6, 2024 and a follow-up historic assessment request May 16, 2024 Revised plans were submitted March 5th of this year, and a planning director hearing was held in which the owners and applicant or architect and appellant to be attended. The planning director's decision to approve the site development review was issued on March 31st, and an appeal was filed April 7th. So here is the location. Here's an aerial on the left of the property. It is fronting on Mockingbird Lane, which is an easement right on the County City line with City of Pleasanton directly to the south. So the street to the left or west in this aerial is Amber Lane. And you can see this is not quite an unincorporated island, but at the edge of unincorporated Alameda County on the band side at the end of the arrow. Upper left is a view of the front of the house facing what is essentially the left side lot line, Amber Lane. And in the far right, you can see a fence along the far side of Mockingbird Lane and some trees on the other side of the fence on the adjacent property. And then the lower right-hand view is is of the adjacent property where the appellant resides. And you can see in the little blue oval on the left of that lower image the edge of the existing house that will be demolished. This is the approved design for new two-story home. It would be reoriented from facing Mockingbird Lane and that driveway would be eliminated and a new driveway would be created so that the new home faces Amber Lane. This is facing west. There's a site plan, sorry if that's difficult to see at that scale. This shows the setback, which is about 50 feet where 30 feet is required and about 120 feet between the two homes, just a few feet less than the present distance separation.

I'm not sure you had that right. You said the house is going to orient towards Amber Lane. Doesn't the existing house orient towards Amber Lane and the new house is going to orient towards Mockingbird?

The both the existing a new home would face Amber Lane. However, the current homes driveway is off of Mockingbird and that will be that will be changed. Okay. Okay, so here's the proposed and at this point approved and appealed front and rear elevations. And... What I want to show is for the side elevations, the elevation in question with this appeal is the lower elevation in the light blue oval. And so this is to show that there are windows. There's not a lot of glazing and there's no balconies on that side. The design you see here was modified with slightly less glazing or fewer windows than what was originally submitted two years ago. So the basis of the appeal, just to break it down is privacy impacts, specifically from upper windows and direct view into the appellant's backyard. Inadequate evidence provided to demonstrate no significant impacts to privacy, excessive massing and drainage concerns. and staff's response i'll go through these and then hit on a few items in particular so the homes as i indicated the homes are and will remain approximately 120 feet apart from each other uh the front or south setback facing the appellant's property will be uh Around 50 feet or 30 feet minimum is required. 20 feet of that is the Mockingbird Lane easement that runs across the property. The new home and driveway will reorient to not face the appellant's home. So that's just the driveway. The existing home already does face Amber. So that's the... was redesigned with a greater setback between the new home and appellant's home from the original submittal two years ago. It also features fewer windows and no balconies facing the appellant's home. The R1 zone does not require site development review for a home of this size on a lot of this size. The SDR is driven by location in the L combining or overlay zone. Our one zone allows up to 30 feet in height on a parcel this size. That requirement's met. It's a few feet under. It's about three feet under. Other homes in the neighborhood contain two stories such as with the approved design. So the surrounding properties contain a mix of one and two story homes. And so staff finds it onerous to require that additional diagrams be provided as was requested or to condition the approval to preclude future balconies along the south side. As far as referral requests to other departments and agencies, they did not identify existing or future drainage issues and any potential issues would be addressed with conditions of approval that were attached to the approval. All development standards are met. No variances required. And a historical assessment report did not find the existing structure to be significant. And please note that that report is not part of this appeal or this review. Just some statistics. I have three final slides here with some statistics that are in the staff report to just compare the existing property, the original 2024 proposal and the 2026 approval. and show the changes in sizes of the home, garage, deck, accessory structures, number of stories goes from one to two. So 27 and a half feet in height. In terms of yards, required setbacks are met by the project. And a greater setback was provided between the two homes with the approval than what was first submitted two years ago. Finally, just a brief comparison of the sizes of the surrounding properties and their homes, just in terms of bulk and mass. And these are all in City of Pleasanton, except for the home to the rear at the end of Mockingbird Lane. In conclusion, staff recommends that the Planning Commission deny this appeal of site design review number PLN 2024-00109 for new home, thereby upholding the planning director's decision to approve the project. Staff's available to answer any questions you may have. And again, we have the applicant, who's the project architect online, as well as the appellant. Okay, is there any questions of staff?

Does the appellant have anything to say on their appeal? Chair, question.

Secretary, what is the procedure for how much time is allotted to both applicant and appellant in these appeals?

From the approval, they get 10 days to appeal.

I mean, for this hearing.

What do you mean?

So other public agencies have standards saying five minutes for the applicant, five minutes for the appellant, or do they just follow our three-minute rule for public comment? I just want to make sure we're having a bounded expectation that is practiced in

I misunderstood the question, sorry. It's really up to the chair. I mean, usually we give the applicant 10 minutes. That's what we've done at the Board of Supervisors for a presentation like this, and then give the same amount to the opposing party, and then maybe even some time for a butthole, but it's really up to the chair based on the number of speakers and all that. I think only Ivan is the applicant.

Is that right?

The appellant. And the applicant is who? Arbel. Arbel. So they're both online. Neither one have raised their hand. So I would encourage them to do so if they wanted to speak.

Okay. So now Ivan's got his hand up. Ivan being the appellant.

Ivan, you are online.

You have three minutes. Fantastic. So first of all, thank you. This is my first hearing, so I'm not too familiar with the process. But look, I think it's a beautiful house. You can turn the clock off. We're not... That's okay. I won't need... I've only in a long time, so don't worry about that. My only ask when we had the first hearing, I think it was back in April, was a confidence about the, and a visual confirmation about how the house, you know, from the windows will overlook my yard. I've asked it several times, you know, that was never provided. I had no, like, affirmation that the current screening that is with trees and bushes will not be removed. So those are really my concerns, right? I want to make sure that the privacy of my home is maintained. When we purchase the property, you know, we purchase it based on the location and the fact it was not a two story house that could overlook our yard. And that's really, you know, my main concern is just look, I just want to make sure that there is um that continuity or privacy and i don't think it's in a reasonable ask right it's a visual confirmation or just an acknowledgement that if there is issues or the screening that exists today will will will remain in place that's it and i really appreciate the time and thank you for allowing me this opportunity okay and then the applicant r bell does that person have anything they want to say

I can allow them to speak. Arbel, if you are online and you'd like to speak, now is the time.

Okay, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Okay. You know, so far whatever planning task we provided, It's more than 120 feet. I believe it's more than 120 feet distance. And with a triangle that is 17 feet in one side, a zero on the other side with 130 feet, any fence of six feet, it can block the view. So I don't know what is the concern. But anyway, we are ready. Anything that planning asks, any document, video, or any analysis, we can provide because our study shows that the bushes that we have there, trees that they are there, they are blocking the view as a screen. So there is no way from the second floor window somebody can see anything in neighbors. I understand his concern. Always we have these things, but I believe that we are fine with that window. But any recommendation from planning, we are ready to hear it. Thank you.

Is there any other speakers on this item?

Okay, I'm going to close. There's another speaker. Kelly has his hand up.

you are online you have three minutes thank you um yeah i don't know much about the details of this particular uh project the sight lines or anything like that but i will point out that since it is on the boundary of the city of pleasanton if you listen to what the city of pleasanton always says when they they they talk about you know what they expect from uh residential developments and their residential standards. And as soon as they talk about, oh, you know, this is some parcel, some street, it's part of the county, but maybe Pleasanton should annex it or incorporate it. Here's what they ask about. They say, hey, it doesn't have any sidewalks. No sidewalks. They think that a lot of A lot of their suburban things should have sidewalks. I bet you this one doesn't have any sidewalks either. County, you know, the public works agency, they get used to, this is what their standard is, no sidewalks. And they also don't have any street lighting. So there's no street lighting. And usually so you go there at midnight, you know, it's kind of dark. And then then there's the other thing, which is, you know, in Pleasanton, you get this thing called underground drainage lines where underneath the streets where they drain. It's called draining the rain runoff into into, you know, gutters and then carrying it off. to the creeks or whatever they do with the water to get it off the streets. But the county doesn't have any drainage. The streets have gutters on the side and the water doesn't go anywhere. I don't know what the official plan is for the water, but there's no drains. And so that's kind of what the situation is in all these county things. And then, you know, there's the different street standards, the widths, the private streets, all that kind of stuff that the county usually does. So really, it's a matter of figure out what the standards are in Pleasanton and then figure out every shortcut you could take. And that's how the county does it. Thank you.

The speakers, that's it for speakers.

Okay, I'm going to close public comment on that. Commissioners, anybody want to jump in?

Yeah, Commissioner Silva. Aubrey, would you please put up the elevation that would face the appellant's house? That would be the south elevation, I believe. And you circled in blue there. Now, I went out and looked at this location. I don't know how anybody looking out that window could not look into the appellant's backyard. I think the appellant has a legitimate complaint here, a legitimate concern, put it that way. Presumably that's two rooms. If it's two rooms, why do they have to be windows on the second floor at all? It's the second floor that we're worried about here. He's worried about it. It's not the lower floor. The second floor, why do they have to be windows there at all? We'll have a window on the right and a window on the left into those rooms.

It's a question for you. Yeah, perhaps. I mean, it is typical to have windows on all sides. And at most rooms, perhaps the architect could speak to that specificity.

Sorry, pardon me again?

Perhaps the architect could speak to that.

So which window? The question is about which window, the middle one?

The two large windows on the second story.

Yeah. One of them is a egress window. So it has to be up to 42 inch from the floor so we can do anything. The other one is just to match with that one we put it there. But it's not egress. Egress because that bedroom it has another window.

Well, he's got a window on either side. Two different bedrooms. Two different bedrooms. So we got one bedroom facing left and one window facing left and one window facing right.

It's two bedrooms there. If you look at the floor plan, it shows that two bedrooms.

Oh. Okay, let me switch gears on this. If we were to make a condition of approval that if this is approved, the applicant will be required to plant trees and foliage on the edge of their property in the expectation that in a reasonable amount of time, it would block a view from those windows into the appellant's yard. Would that be acceptable with staff?

That's a condition of approval that we can certainly add and we would look for that at the final inspection.

Okay, thank you. I got to speak up now. I got loads of problems with that whole approach. I guess, is there anything in the county code that guarantees someone privacy in their backyard that no two story home will ever have the ability to look into it at any point in time. Or if you got there first, that you have some level of rights greater than others who come later. I mean, you've got a house on a one acre lot meets all the requirements, you know, I just, I don't understand this concept that there needs to be some, is there anything in County code that guarantees that no one's ever going to look in your backyard from a two story window?

I mean, Oh, there, there isn't anything like that there. We have, we do have view protections and fair view that, that relate to whoever got there first or whoever was able to establish a, you know, a historic view, but that's, we're not in fair view. And that's only about views in terms of what there is a guarantee of privacy. There are, There's nothing that I know of that would guarantee that.

That's more like a bay view, though, right? I mean, that's not a... The fair view one is a view of your back, somebody looking in your backyard?

Oh, it's a view out of a window or something like that. A view protection as opposed to a privacy issue.

Like you can't plant a tree to block their view. Not, I want you to block a tree. It's the opposite situation. Yeah.

Um, yeah, I just, I just have a real problem with that approach. Uh, requiring this property owner to do anything more than any other property owner in that neighborhood has to do, um, is, would be my approach. Um, And there are two-story homes in that neighborhood. And I'm sure some of those two-story homes are able to look into some of their neighbors' yards. But looking at the Google Street View on my laptop here, the appellant has a ton of trees in his yard. So there's a big screen there already. And his house sits quite a ways away from where this house is going to sit. So I'm not seeing a problem here that we need to address. Um, I don't know if other commissioners want to jump in, but I, I mean, I, I would, I would entertain a motion to, uh, deny the appeal period because I just see no validity to it whatsoever. And the, I think the appellant's letter in this expectation that no one should ever have the right to look in his backyard is just overblown and ridiculous, honestly. So other commissioners commissioners.

I agree with what you're saying. We have setbacks basically already and they met the setbacks. Yeah. And those setbacks were to try to make it fair for everyone to say, look, you gotta be this distance away. Uh, there is something in some towns and cities that will tell you they want plants, um, colors. We've seen stuff come through those boards. Sometimes when they're doing decoration outside of, uh, look of it, the aesthetics of the buildings. We have put it on that and with plant life sometimes. So that could fall in that realm a little bit, but I wouldn't use it for privacy. I would just be using it for making the place look better. A lot to say.

And it looked like, so it's two years to get the site development review through the process. not knowing what occurred there why it took two years it could have been on the applicants you know the applicants didn't submit plans or whatever it could it could easily be that as much as anything else but when you do have opposition that certainly does delay the process and it looked like the applicant already shaved 500 feet off the house uh took a deck off you know made a number of concessions uh aubry you're the planner on this So was the applicant obligated to make any of those concessions?

No, not obligated.

Okay, so they made an effort to try to make some concessions to this neighbor, redesigning the house in several ways. Correct. Yeah, but I mean the idea that bedrooms shouldn't have windows to address these concerns or some sort of landscaping to build a two-story house that complies with all the rules. I don't support that. Did you want to say something?

I agree with my colleagues on the applicants meeting our objective standards for high setbacks, other requirements. But I have one question. I think someone said something about drainage. Whoever can answer this question. All development has to meet the standards from the San Francisco Bank Quality Control Board. so there are actually regional standards on how we deal with water runoff and projects have to meet them so i think i just want to be clear that i don't think everyone understands that there's our requirements there's regional requirements we enforce those um and so i think people take that as there are no requirements i think there are Just not everyone who's familiar with development doesn't understand the layers of standards you often have to meet to get a project approved. So I just wanted to illuminate that one point. Otherwise, I'd be supporting, I guess I could make a motion to support this recommendation. Second that motion.

I'd like to revisit the possible requirement or the requirement to request that the applicant be required to plant trees or other foliage that can be reasonably expected to block any view from the window into the appellant's yard in a reasonable period of time. I'd like to, if I may suggest that be added to the motion.

I will not accept that friendly amendment.

I wouldn't support that either. I wouldn't be able to vote for it in that case. I would point out just on the drainage. So on a house this size, are they going to have to do hydro modification or bioswales?

No bioswales.

Okay. So what happens to the drainage? It just goes out to the street or whatever? There's a description somewhere about this being a sloped lot, but it's like 200 by 200, and it slopes five feet from the highest to the lowest. That doesn't really qualify as slope to me. It might be enough slope for water to drain off, but certainly not. I don't know what the percentage is on that, so it's been too long a day to figure that out real quick. But the other thing, too, is Mockingbird Lane has a concrete V-ditch. that runs all the way along the appellant's property line. So the idea that somehow there's gonna be some flood that's going to jump that V-ditch and land on his property is just not a possibility really in any storm. So on the drainage, on a single family home, really nothing's required then.

I think it just drains to the site. I don't think there's any requirement that it be You know, swelled over. Yeah. Okay. It's such a big, it's an acre of property.

Okay. So we have a motion and a second. Is there any other discussion?

Commissioner Zeiss? Commissioner Kelly had his hand up as well.

Okay. Commissioner Kelly, go ahead. Sorry.

No, I think that we've kind of gotten to the place I was at, so I won't say a lot other than I do think the neighbors should plant trees, but I think they should choose to do that. I don't think the planning commission should get in between that level of detail. If I were building that house, I would have already planted the trees before I even started because I would want them myself. um but I I think this is an area that needs to be cleaned up in County code in general and just want to flag that especially now with adus um like a neighbor building the same location and same concerns that it was an adu wouldn't be considered by anyone but I think the commissioner comments across the board were things I agree with I just think that there's a balance between privacy and housing and as frustrating as it is for people to be able to look into your yard. And I do appreciate having some review. I mean, if this was like a panel of 10 square feet of windows on one side of the house, like I have seen very egregious things, actually not at the County Planning Commission where I think our intervention would be warranted, but I don't think we need to do anything else here. And I think the neighbors can sort this out amongst themselves.

There's ice. So Zach was going to say the exact same thing. Basically, try to be a good neighbor. If I could, I would suggest putting plants and talk and communicate and try to work together.

Okay, so roll call vote.

Mr. Silva, go ahead. Beat the motion, please. It's just...

A straight approval of the staff. To recommend the staff recommendation. Just to.

To deny the appeal. Okay, thanks.

Conditions. Additional conditions. That's right.

Commissioner Nielsen. Oh, sorry. Commissioner Nielsen. Aye. Commissioner Zeiss. Aye. Commissioner Silva. Aye. Commissioner Hernandez. Aye. Commissioner Rocha. Yes. Vice Chair Kelly.

Yes. Yes.

Chair Crawford? Aye. Motion passes.

Okay, moving on to Item B, Bay Fair Community-Based Transportation Plan Updates. Can we have the staff report on this item?

I need to recuse myself from this item, so I'm going to step off until it's over.

Just give us a minute to do the change of the chair here.

Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Angelica Gonzalez, Senior Planner with Alameda County's Planning Department. I'm joined by Dominic Lucchese, also Planner with the Planning Department. This is an informational presentation on the Bay Fair Community-Based Transportation Plan, also known as the CBTP. This is a joint effort led by Alameda County and the City of San Leandro. We're also working closely in coordination with the Public Works Agency staff and our BART partner. This CBTP is an important part of the planning department's work. It's equity focused and centers on the transportation needs of underserved communities and identifies gaps related to access, safety, and mobility in order to identify potential solutions to community supported transportation improvements. Next slide, please. Alrighty, so this exhibit highlights various planning efforts relevant to the Bay Fair area, just to give you some background, which includes Ashland and unincorporated Alameda County and neighboring jurisdictions, including the city of San Leandro. So work that the county is leading are highlighted in the area in blue to the left and efforts the city of San Leandro is leading. are highlighted on the right in red. We'd like to acknowledge that while these projects are led respectively by the jurisdictions, we're working closely with our BART partner and the City of San Leandro's Planning Department on these various efforts, as well as various county departments. County efforts include the first of which is pre-planning work to advance transit-oriented development at the Bay Fair, BART TOD site, transit-oriented development in unincorporated Alameda County. Another project that we're working on includes the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's transit-oriented communities policies, and this is associated with parking management, access, circulation, housing, and zoning. I won't get into too much about this since we'll be making a presentation in the future on this project. And the City of San Leandro's relevant Bay Fair efforts are highlighted in red on the right. So this focuses on advancing implementation of the city's adopted bay fair tod specific plan vision for the development at bay fair and also transit oriented communities compliance the city will hold separate outreach meetings on their development plan in the future with opportunities for public input so we do recognize that there are several active projects associated with the bay fair station area for this evening we're focusing on the bay fair community-based transportation plan which is Shown at the center of the slide and highlighted in yellow, which I mentioned earlier this evening, that is co-led between the city and county. With that, I'll hand it off to Dominic Lucchese, who is the county's lead planner and will be walking us through the CBTP updates and next steps.

Good evening commissioners dominic lucchese with the planning department. i'd like to start with an overview of what the bay fair Community based transportation plan or CB TP is all about. bay fair CB TP is a collaborative planning effort between alameda county and the city of San leandro. funded through a grant from the alameda county transportation Commission. The goal of the project is to make travel to and from Bay Fair BART, schools, and local destinations in Ashland and San Leandro easier, safer, and more convenient, especially for people who rely on walking, biking, and transit to get around. The project is community driven and staff are engaging residents, businesses, and community groups to identify neighborhood transportation challenges and solutions. There is also an added emphasis on outreach to equity priority communities. This is a designation used by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission to identify census tracts that have a high concentration of underserved populations, such as households with low incomes and people of color. So we have given several informational presentations over the past year or so, including to the Planning Commission and including several stops at the EDMAC to hear their feedback on the plan. But what will the CBTP result in? The goal is to produce a final plan with recommended transportation projects and the public right-of-way that directly reflect community priorities. The final plan will include two separate lists of prioritize projects, one for the city and one for the county with potential funding sources identified. We also hope that through this process we can forge stronger lasting relationships between community benefit organizations community members and public agencies like the planning department. Here is a map of the CB TP boundary. It's focused on the area surrounding the Bayfair BART station, which sits at the intersection of San Leandro and Ashland. It includes communities with equity priority populations who face distinct barriers to travel that the CBTP will seek to address. CBTPs have been conducted in many communities across the Bay Area. And this slide shows examples of improvements that may be recommended in the final Bay Fair CBTP. So things like improved access to BART, programs to slow fast cars, separated bike lanes, streetscape improvements, ADA access improvements, sidewalk and crossing improvements, just to give you an idea. So next I'll give an overview of our engagement thus far. project seeks to center the voice of community members through participatory approaches meaning residents are co-creators of this plan and not just recipients of information to this end the project builds in several opportunities for the public to provide feedback at open houses pop-up events and online surveys the outreach strategy is guided by a steering committee made up of residents from unincorporated alameda county in san leandro CBOs like the Ashland Community Association, the EDENMAC, and public agencies, including the Public Works Department, HARD, BART, and AC Transit. The first phase of engagement occurred last year and focused on gathering initial feedback about existing transportation gaps. We held an online survey. We conducted interviews with community representatives. We held pop-up events at National Night Out in Cherryland and at the Bay Fair Farmers Market. And finally, we took a tour of the site with the steering committee. A second phase of engagement began just this past March. The focus here was to share our findings from the first round of engagement, share improvements that are already underway, and engage participants on additional desired improvements and locations. Phase two kicked off with a steering committee meeting, followed by a successful community open house at REACH Ashland Youth Center in April. Engaging with equity priority communities is an explicit goal of this project. And to that end, all materials for the open house were presented in Spanish, Chinese, and Tagalog with translation services available on site. We also partnered with local CBOs La Familia and San Leandro 2050 to help spread the word about the event. Next, I'll give a brief overview of what we've learned through two rounds of the community engagement. So here are the six major themes that emerge from phase one. So we heard that convenient and safe access to BART and major destinations is limited. The auto dominated landscape creates safety barriers to walking and biking. The bike network is disconnected and stressful to navigate. Safety and personal security concerns are a barrier to travel. Structural barriers restrict equitable transportation access. And we also heard that the lack of amenities like shade, lighting, and seating made the area uninviting. Here's a few direct quotes from the community members that highlight the top priorities from the previous slide. I'm not going to read them all out loud because we have limited time, but we wanted to include them in your materials for your review. Next, here's a map that displays the types of feedback we received and highlights specific locations in need of transportation improvements. The 10 streets in the county mentioned most often are listed on the slide to the left. And four of these streets have active public work projects that will address some of these concerns. Those streets are highlighted in green. Just to go drill down even further on the types of improvements people want to see, we asked community members to vote on their top priorities at the open house in April. And after all the votes were tallied, the top priorities were better street lighting, benches and shade at bus stops, improvements to make it easier and safer to cross the street, and more street trees. And I'll close with our next steps. This slide shows our engagement approach across the four phases of the project. As I mentioned, we held our first open house in April and we're wrapping up phase two by developing draft recommended projects based on the feedback we have received so far. The next phase of engagement will focus on finalizing project recommendations through another open house, a survey and pop up event which will happen this summer. So our presentation here tonight is the last public meeting for this phase of the project. We'll start another roadshow in the fall with stops at the Eden Mac Planning Commission and Unincorporated Services Committee to present the draft plan for feedback. The grant timeline expires at the end of this year, and we expect to bring the plan to the board for adoption in the winter. So that's it for my presentation, I just want to make you aware, we do have a project website it's a fair CB tp.org where you can follow, along with everything that's going on with this project and we're happy to answer any questions.

Any questions of staff. Have any speakers on did you have some.

Do you have a question? I appreciate the intentional steps to engage youth in terms of decision process, or feedback process rather, with the community open house that took place on April 23, at the outreach Ashland youth center. Do you know how many youth participated or were in attendance?

Don't have an exact number. We'd had 50 overall participants and quite a few of them were appeared to be youth, but I don't have that exact number.

Thank you. Thank you. Dominic, when you come up with a list of proposed improvements, be a pretty ambitious list. Hopefully it sounds like it will be. Where would you expect to find the funding for this? How would this be funded? Is MTC money available or comes straight from the county's general fund? What's your expectation?

Along with the project list, our consultants will be preparing an implementation plan, which will include potential sources of funding. There's a lot of different pots that we could potentially pull from, such as OBAG money. I'm not sure if, Angelica, you want to expand on that.

Leave dominant covered most of it. But overall, as part of the community based transportation plan, this would be the first step to memorialize potential improvements. And then with that, our intention and goal is to apply for future grants is one of them. And hopefully, in coordination with the Public Works Agency identified other funding opportunities to make sure that these improvements are done at some point in the future.

And I think more of like a commentary, probably a question in there. It's sort of a best practice to have a list of shovel-ready infrastructure and transportation improvements. Like we never know when sources of funding will happen, whether it's grants or, you know, the county decides to spend some resources. It's a best practice just to have your shovel-ready list.

I would say so, yes. I mean, this is a good list for us to keep working on into the future. Our partner is Puppet Works. I mean, they're going to be doing most of this in terms of the actual probably fundraising and assessing what has priority and such to some degree.

I think there can be a disconnect for community because I think sometimes communities say, here's all the things we wanted. Why aren't they happening? So I think there's a public trust issue. So I just want to say, you know, this is a public meeting. People may watch it. That the first step is just to come up with a list of improvements you'd like to see in your community. It doesn't mean they're all going to get built right away. Sometimes some of them may not get built, but then it's, then it's time to figure out, okay, How do we advocate for grant funding from DOT, from MTC, from every other acronym from an agency for funding? But that's the important next step. But again, I think you guys are doing a good job identifying. I said the outreach was really good. I saw 14 slides of outreach. I would have liked to have seen a little bit more slides on what you're planning to do. But I thought overall that the... As someone who has walked and biked in this community, I think making sure that people feel safe. Seeing this area is pretty, pretty important. Sorry. To see that you're doing. Just seeing the full.

I would just give you a word of caution. As you go through this, if at some point the intent would be to remove parking on East 14th, you'll probably run into some resistance from on that. I would base that on previous applications that came to the planning commission and majority of the commission's desire that parking for those businesses be, improved. In fact, there was a, you know, desire to change the specific plan, the downtown specific plan, which allows new development with no parking, which was problematic on a project that, that, that came to us. So just a word of caution that, you know, throughout all your planning, if that's where you're going to, I know I will oppose that adamantly and maybe other commissioners will as well. So. Anything else?

Just if I may, I do appreciate the detailed engagement outreach report. I think that speaks to your level of importance and going out to the community and getting feedback. Just one clarification question for me, if I may, in terms of the direct quotes, that's for both phase one and two, right? That's a synopsis for phase one and two.

I believe the quotes came from our online survey.

Your online survey, okay.

In phase one.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, and then Kelly A has his hand up.

Kelly A, you are online. You have three minutes.

Very good. Thank you. You know, we have here a conflict between the reality on the ground and the political, not political, theological beliefs of a lot of people. There's a lot of people who believe with religious fervor, with complete and total fanatical belief conviction that parking is the end all and be all. So this is a great place to talk about that because why are we talking about improvements? Because most of this area, if you look at the land area around Bayfair Station and around the Bayfair Mall, the mall is mostly empty from what I hear and the parking lots are mostly empty too. Now, why would such a wonderful parking lot be mostly empty most of the time? Well, BART ridership has dropped by half since the pandemic. And it's getting so bad that BART is running out of money and they're talking about shutting down stations. And they even have a doomsday scenario, which does not involve shutting down Bayfair. Bayfair would survive, but they would shut down Castro Valley. They would shut down Dublin, East Dublin, Pleasanton, West Dublin, Pleasanton. They would shut down every station out to the east. And another total of 15 stations. It's very doomsday. So when you realize, when you just get out there, if you're walking and bicycling or riding BART and look out the window, look at that parking lot. See how empty it is? That's the problem. That's what you're trying to improve. And the way to improve it is not to keep building parking lots. The problem is not trying to preserve your parking lot. The problem is trying to figure out what to do with a useless parking lot that you've got right now. And all these, the planners, they never mentioned, they talked about all the great cooperation they're doing, but they never mentioned how many units, how tall are the buildings, what density. I didn't hear that in the verbal conversation. oral presentation. But, you know, that's why we need a lot of development here. This is a great place for development because it's next to a BART station and because you've got a lot of wasted land. This is supposed to be a land use authority. You know, Alameda County is a land use authority. You're supposed to figure out how to use the land. And certainly what you're doing now is a very bad way to misuse a lot of empty land. Thank you.

No more speakers online.

Okay, closing public comment happily. This is informational. Anything else from staff? Okay, thank you very much. Moving on to item C zoning ordinance updates to some multifamily residential development standards to implement sixth cycle housing element densities.

Yes, I wanted to enter this item before passing it over to our consultant team. As you recall, about 18 months or so, the county adopted its housing element. There was a major ordinance that was part of that work. You may recall that in addition to rezoning a number of sites, that we also made a number of changes to our existing zoning districts to be able to accommodate higher densities and to also offer process expediting for certain types of projects. Since then, we did hire the M group Tom Ford's at the podium who will go through the PowerPoint. And we hired M group to look at our process improvements internally, but also to look at our external sort of public facing documents. We did some test fits on some of our zoning districts and asked the M group to be able to come up with refinements to our existing zoning, as well as our development standards in our design guidelines and standards. so that projects could achieve the density that was being asked of them, especially at more of the higher zoning districts and more dense zoning districts that we found throughout the county. And so with that, I do have a PowerPoint, and I wanted to introduce Tom Ford from the M Group.

Tom. Thank you, Albert. Good evening, chair, planning commissioners. My name is Tom Ford, as Albert said. I work at M Group. I'm a principal. I manage the East Bay office, the Alameda County office up in Berkeley. With me tonight is Buddy Williams, an architect at Studio KDA, whose office is also in Berkeley. Next. So what we want to do tonight is ask you to recommend to the Board of Supervisors that they approve the Chapter 1731 amendments that were in your staff report and a couple of small amendments to Chapter 8.2 in the Residential Design Standards and Guidelines. Next. So what I'll do briefly here with you is just give you a little bit of background. Albert already gave you some. And then I want to go through how the amendments to the zoning ordinance were figured out. And these are just for the housing overlay zoning districts, the housing element sites that were approved as part of your housing element. There's a couple of amendments to the residential design standards and guidelines, and then we have some visual information to help show you why we did that and then talk about the next steps. So next. So M Group, where I work, is a planning firm in the Bay Area, and we do a lot of land use planning, CEQA, things like that. We also do a service to jurisdictions where we put planners in an office. If the county were short an associate planner for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, we have staff that we help them. So using that sort of service, skill set that we have. The county hired us to go back and look at the Baker-Tilley report, some of the things that were identified there for making process improvements. We did that. We actually put a couple of our planners in the office with the planning staff and they worked on that. And then the other thing, so those are improvements that they've already been making, and they don't need to come through an approval process. However, the zoning ordinance updates do, and that's why we're here tonight. So for the zoning ordinance updates, we put on our team Studio KDA because they're... multifamily architects in the Bay Area and they have experience actually dealing with multifamily zoning codes and going through what are the right standards to get to to make sure that you can ensure that you get the development that you're offering. So the reason the county staff wanted to have this component as part of our work program was because when the housing element sites were approved, they used the R4, existing R4 standards to create the code. So they wanted Studio KDA to actually do test fits. So most of Studio KDA's work was looking at the sites, understanding what the zoning ordinance that the board had passed offered and making sure that if something was being called a 25 dwelling unit per acre site, that you could really achieve that because the HCD, they'll come through and they'll wanna make sure every now and then that you're actually meeting your numbers. So that was the big effort that Studio KDA went through. This slide is just showing the review process that we did. So we've been since January going to the various Macs and there's the voting record too. So for instance, in Castro Valley, they voted for two against our amendments. There was one recuse or one absence. In Fairview Mac, they voted three, two in favor of the proposed changes. And then at the Eden area Mac in April, they voted five to one in favor.

What was the opposition to Valley Mac?

The opposition generally was to the housing element at all. So the fact that these sites had been chosen, I think all three Macs did not approve the housing element when it came through a couple of years ago. So it was a little bit of that. As a matter of fact, the Eden vote just in April, the chair, as a matter of conscience, she decided since she had not voted to approve the housing element site, she didn't think she could in good conscience approve this, even though we're just trying to make it better and make sure that the county has zoning standards that can deliver the development that's guaranteed.

The planning commission didn't approve it either.

That's what I've heard.

Right. So go ahead. I was curious what Castor Valleys was. I didn't mean to interrupt you.

No, that's OK. Well, it's a good point because we're not actually asking you to approve new sites. We're not actually asking you to up zone in any way that hasn't already been done. But what we are asking you to do is approve these amendments to the zoning ordinance to make sure that the development that someone is told that they can get in an overlay district actually can happen. And I'll get into that, what they basically did with their test fits.

But you realize we're not necessarily in favor of that, right?

That's what some of the voting has been so far as well, right? But whether you're in favor of it or not, I still have to come here and tell you what we did.

I get it, but I mean, if all of us are remembering how this all went down, being asked to make these changes to make it easier to implement housing elements, those changes, is kind of contradictory to what we've already established, I think. So that's why I'm questioning it.

I understand what you're saying, but actually another way to look at it is we're guaranteeing that what you're saying to an applicant or a developer that they can get on a site, that you've got standards that actually can achieve that. I know you don't want that much development, but right now you run the risk of having standards that don't allow somebody to develop at the density that they've been guaranteed in that overlay district.

Yeah. And I'm actually okay with that because a lot of that is wrong.

I mean, the densities, this TOC that they're trying to do around the Castle Valley BART station destroys our downtown.

Seven-story low-income housing in place of all of our retail. It's not an improvement. I understand that the people that sit high up at MTC know much better than us, but since we live here, you know, we have a better idea of what we want our community to be as opposed to being told what it should be is my point, but go ahead.

I understand your point. And because I work in a lot of different communities in the Bay area, and I hear this from various viewpoints. So as I said, what M groups role in that is, Project was basically to do a series of steps for the planning department to help them assess their online portal, the system that takes development through the permit tracking system. We updated the ADU ordinance. We did a lot of things like that. We created an observations memo. Those two staff members that we actually had in the department created an observations memo that the department was really excited about and plans to use as sort of an operational manual going forward. Next. So as I said, and as we were just discussing with the chair, we were to analyze the feasibility of those zoning ordinance standards that had been implemented as part of the housing or element adoption. So that's Title 1731 or Chapter 1731 in your ordinance. And what we did, Buddy's team at Studio KDA, was to just try to go through there, look at the sites, look at the rules, and see can you develop a building that this zoning standard says you should be able to get. Next. So I think we've already discussed, we're talking about the housing element sites, and so we just want to impress upon you that this is not Countywide, it's looking at very discrete set of opportunity sites that were identified in the housing element. So if you can see across the three Macs, there's the sites. They're coded by density up in the upper left. And so there's a range of sites that we had and that's the task in front of the architects. Next. So the chapter 1731 updates were for the housing element sites only. There were no changes to density, no changes to building height. And so what that left the architect with is as they actually constructed in a model test fits, they had to look for other places to play with the standards in order to get the development that was achieved or promised. So that ended up with being minor amendments to some of the lower and medium density zoning standards. Next. However, that one site, the Bayfair Park parking lot, that is the highest density site of those housing element overlay sites. It's a higher density zoning district. that has, I think it was in the housing element, it was between 86 and 125 dwelling units per acre. And so what we did was, again, we did some test fits. Last October, the governor signed SB 79, which is the law that within a half a mile of a BART station or a Caltrain station, significant, transit opportunity. you cannot have a maximum height less than 75 feet. So we had already gone through using the housing element overlay standards, but what we needed to do was to be in conformance with SB 79 and allow all parts of that site to hit 75 feet. If you know that site, you'll know that it's adjacent immediately to single family homes that are only allowed to go to about 30 or 35 feet. So we did try to introduce an incentive on that site. Um, next slide. And what we did was we said, look, you have the, you're allowed to go to 75 feet. However, if you keep the development within 45 feet of those single family neighborhoods lower, no more than three stories, you can go to 12 stories on other parts of the site. So what we did is like a density bonus, if you will. We tried to incentivize a lower density adjacent to the single family, a lower height, excuse me, adjacent to the single family in exchange for the allowance to go higher elsewhere. And we show that on the next map. So here's what SB 79 says, predicts for the Bay Fair site, 75 feet. So what we tried to do is along Colby and along the single family neighborhood, reduce that or incentivize building smaller next, no more than three stories. And that would allow you to build higher over against the BART station, against the BART tracks and against the station. That's the one change rather than just accepting SB 79 as a blanket zoning ordinance, which we did, but we tried to incentivize this smaller, this shorter density or height.

Green section is the 45 foot setback.

Correct. Correct. Next. So that's the zoning ordinance, and we're here to answer questions. But let me just talk real briefly about the two changes we made to Chapter 8.2 in the development standards.

They deal with the landscape requirement and some corrective text edits.

So next. Here what we did... Previously, we did not change the metrics. It's still minimum of 50% landscaping in the required setbacks. However, what we want to replace is on the left. It doesn't stipulate where that landscaping might be. So what we try to do on the right is indicate that when you do that 50% landscaping, there's a certain place where it should go, in front of the building, along the frontage, And where you have an opportunity, perhaps to screen a surface parking lot that's probably a good opportunity to put the landscape in there, the other change next that we made to the standards Oh, let me show you some photos so again. What do we mean when we say landscaping? So here's about a five to eight foot frontage setback between the sidewalk and the building. So just some typical landscaping next. And you can see these are recent, throughout the Bay Area, recent multifamily development. Here's a stepped approach in Rohnert Park up to the front doors next. And then here, this last image, you see that there's landscaping not only in front of the building, but as I was saying, trying to find ways to landscape screen the parking lot. So the parking is screened not only by a fence, but it also has landscaping in the setback before it. Next. The other standard that we wanted to adjust, this was just aligning the text in the document with the image and the forefoot was incorrect on the left. So we switched out the four and it's supposed to be five, but we also drew the building to a little bit better scale so that it was looked more realistic. And so when you have that upper level setback above a ground floor retail situation, It would be greater than five feet, but it only has to be 40%. And so we tried to come up with an image that was a little bit more indicative of a real situation. Next. And then here's just a couple of images of upper level setbacks. First, this is in downtown Oakland, five story building with an upper level setback in the middle of the building. And then the next one, is a setback. It's actually all the way. It's not just an upper level setback. This is a 100% residential building. And so they actually take the middle of the building and step it back a little bit just to find a way to relieve the mass a little bit, which was the purpose of the standard in the first place. Next. So again, what we're hoping we can do is that the standards that the updates the amendments that we made the chapter 1731 you can recommend that the planning that the board approve those. and you can recommend that the board approve the two small amendments that we made to chapter 8.2 of the RDSG. And with that, our next steps, after speaking with you folks and getting your recommendation or not, we'll be going to the board of supervisors, hopefully as early as July, to take this up to them. And with that, Buddy and I are both available to answer any questions.

So I don't think this goes to the board of supervisors until the planning commission. Right. Right. Right. Okay. Clarify that. So. On your presentation, you're not really getting into the changes. There's a lot of red on these pages and you're not really going through a lot of that. You touched on a couple of things. but you know, there's, there's a lot here. Um, so that's my first impression of this, um, how comfortable I can get with this, uh, in, in one quick meeting, if I can get comfortable with it at all, honestly, um, is kind of where I'm at. So, I mean, I would like to see a more in-depth, presentation on the, on the changes that you're suggesting here on the exact changes. I mean, some of the stuff you like, you just went through on the setbacks of the upper floor setbacks. Uh, and honestly, if, if the residential design guidelines after all these years of those, those are the only changes we need to make at this point. And that was, that was done very well back then. Um, So I don't know about other commissioners, but there's a lot here to digest, and I'd like to see a little bit more explanation on that. Sitting here right now, I don't know what all the ramifications are of these changes. I'd like a thorough explanation of that before deciding. Do you want me to wait for other comments or can I, I'm just throwing that out there and seeing what else, you know, what other commissioners have to say commissioners.

There's ice. I'm one of the first things I asked you a major point to me when I was looking at this whole thing, I was looking who supported did not support this. And the thing that the people did not support it is this year that they voted against that. They did not, did so as a pro, I got glasses on. So the protests in the state's mandates of housing element sites distributed and density increases. I have been saying for a while that I think it's unfair that populated heavy dense areas are required to have a higher percentage of dense housing when we don't have a lot of space. While other area counties have much larger area, they can put one or two buildings up and hit the qualifications. So, I believe, I don't support this either, based on the fact that I think that we're being required to do more than was required, not required, however he says. It's because they're requiring us in more difficult situation because our density that we have in population.

Can you reference the page that you're quoting from?

Yeah, what is it?

Oh, my understanding. Oh, what is that page?

Second page. Second page? Yep. Of the staff report?

Okay, if you go to page two, and you got the three...

There you go.

Slide number six.

So based on that, I actually agree that we should get some more information and review this more.

Mr. Kelly, you have your hand up.

Yeah, so I am going momentarily to echo many of the comments made by the chair, although I would just like to start by saying in the decade I've served on the Planning Commission, we have had many things come before us that were supported by two out of three MACs. And I have never once seen a consultant not put the approval of the MACs first and the one that didn't approve hidden down at the bottom. And I appreciate that this consultant did not play around with the... The public vote. And I mean that in a very genuine way because they voted. I'm not going to vote on this tonight. Whatever motions are made, I'm just going to vote no because I don't feel like we've had a public hearing on it. And I'm confused. If someone was sitting in the audience without the packet tonight, they would think that this item was a change of a diagram and the item the commission just had previously, which I can't cast aspersions on this consultant that there was another item there. But the presentation just didn't cover the document. And I've actually never seen that before on the planning commission, but... I'm sure technically this constitutes a public hearing, but in my mind, it does not. And so I honestly think we just need the presentation to come back that covers some of the changes in the document, which this presentation covered too. Thank you.

I think the melding of what you're doing with the planning department, as far as Baker Tilly and this, I don't understand the logic behind melding that in this hearing. So, I mean, I, we, I think we'd love to hear whatever you're doing with them to try to make things better, you know, outside of this, but why that's being sort of thrown in with this is, is confusing to me. Um, so I think you're hearing, and I don't know that it's a majority at this point, but I think what you're hearing is that we would like you to come back with a more thorough, uh, presentation on exactly what it is. And I, and I, Even then, I don't know that I could vote for it because I haven't changed my view in the sense that the housing element was rammed down our throats. We were continually ignored all throughout the process. Staff and the consultant just put out what they wanted and the site's inventory was rejected by everyone. because we didn't have input on it. It was inflicted on us. And that's the backdrop that you're up against. I understand you're coming in here and saying, well, we kind of, we're telling people they can do this. So we need to change the rules so they can do this. But I'm still like, yeah, we shouldn't be doing this. So how do I get past that? I'm not the kind of person that just, you know, puts on blinders and votes like a lot of people do have the ability to do. Um, so I think, I think that's where we're at commissioners, commissioner Neal.

I go a lot of the same, uh, sentiments I do. There is some light at the end of this tunnel. I do love the fact that staff is consulting and looking at bigger Chile on how to improve. I took out of that. Um, but again i think the housing element had a lot of issues um within it and the process that it and generally for to try to figure out how to unpack that and i think there's the idea of trying to make things improve things is is great but i like to do stuff right the first time unfortunately that doesn't always happen but i wouldn't vote on this tonight as well

Okay. So I think you're looking at a continuance. Is there any other commissioner comments? Commissioner Rocha?

Yeah. I think I would just like to second what my colleagues are saying is just a more thorough explanation of the, um, the text changes to, um, the Munica or the County code. Um, I, I, I get that we're not doing any zoning changes. So this is really about like site conditions, changes, setbacks and other things. But, um, I think I would just like to also understand how this interfaces with like making sure all of these standards are objective under state law, how we're meeting all of our obligations. I do think once the County, you know, itself committed to an housing element that was approved and I believe date has agreed that our housing element is compliant at this time, Albert. So when the state agrees, we have a compliant housing element. Are these changes required to keep it compliant? Or I guess, how does this interface with that? I'd like to know more of that because my understanding is when other jurisdictions have had housing elements deemed compliant, they might have had contingencies on making sure the zoning aligns or other things, but I've never seen this. So I'm just kind of wondering how this interfaces with making sure our housing elements comply.

So the state does require us to rezone sites in order to implement the housing element. They did review this ordinance at one point back a year and a half ago or so during the adoption process. And so we do look at these as refinements to what's already been adopted. So would the state look at this and say, hey, this says 10 feet and you can't get the density that you want without it being 5 feet? I don't think they're going to necessarily get to that level of review. But this is the kind of thing that we would want to put in our annual report that we have refined our development standards to be able to achieve densities for the housing element when we do report to them on an annual basis. So this does help the view of our housing element in the state's eyes, I believe. But would they get down to this level of detail? I would say maybe not. But at the same time, the Board of Supervisors has adopted the housing element, and we want to make sure that if somebody comes through the door, that through our development standards, they can meet the densities that are described in the housing element itself. So in that light is what we're presenting to you tonight. I hear what you're saying about more detail in the ordinance and we can go through all the red lines next time. It sounds like that's what people want to do. They want to go through the red line document and understand every change or more or less what those changes are, why they're being proposed. And so we'll have to do that next time, sounds like. Thank you.

And honestly, I'm not sure how concerned I am with staying compliant with the housing element. That's a negative for me, honestly, and maybe others as well. I will say that the changes you're talking about for the design guidelines are fine. I don't see any issues with any of that. That's kind of a separate issue. And you at some point want to come and tell us what you're doing with staff regarding Baker Tilly. We would love to hear that. We'd love to hear that anything's being done in that regard to make things better. But otherwise, I think we're just looking at continuing this. Do we need a motion for that?

Public comment, please.

Thank you. Have any public comment on this item?

Kelly, Kelly A. Yeah, three minutes.

Thank you. Yeah, we have this deep held, another deeply held religious belief that we're in compliance with the housing element. You know, the housing, there's the process and then there's the end goal. The end goal is to build a certain number of housing units over eight years. And you're running at about what? Something like... 10 or 20% of the end goal, or maybe it's 8%. It's some incredibly small fraction of the housing units you're supposed to be building. And all these little rules that Mr. Ford is helping you to modify, they're just supposed to make it possible to achieve that goal. So this phrase, stay in compliance, It is highly optimistic, maybe even hallucinatory, because you're not, you know, is anyone in compliance? Alameda County isn't. A lot of cities aren't in compliance. Hardly anybody in the state is in compliance. Let's be honest. But, you know, for you to sit here and not change the rules and not try to comply, that makes you look really bad. Let's also... touch for a moment. Some of your people on this commission are supposedly some kind of, they actually know something about construction. So when somebody takes a few stories off one part of the building, you know, a three-story, a six-story building, they remove a few stories and then they add a few stories to some other part to get up to 12 stories or whatever. You know, a 10th story of a building costs about twice double the cost per square foot of the third story or the fourth story of that of a building uh if you build a four-story building it's a lot cheaper because you're using wood because you're meeting different fire standards you you have different elevators you know all those little technical things of construction it's expensive to build high And so let's not get flippant about, oh, we'll just build higher. You can build higher. Yeah, you can build higher and your costs are going to double. So let's use some Baker Tilly on that. Baker Tilly is the emollient, the goodness. It's good to do Baker Tilly to everything because whatever Baker Tilly touches, it brings goodness and improvement, right? But anyway, let's go back to to the housing element, you know, for you to, you know, not only do you not want any housing units to be built, of course, in those particular places, but now you want to argue about the little rules and details to implement that. You've got to stop standing in the way and, you know, at least pretend to try to comply. Just pretend. Thank you.

Okay, do we have any other speakers on this item?

No more speakers.

Okay, closing public comment. Okay, do we need a motion to continue it? All right, motion to continue. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Roll call vote.

Mr. Nielsen? Aye. Commissioner Zayas? Yes. Silva? Yes. Commissioner Hernandez?

Aye.

Commissioner Rocha? Aye. Yes. Chair Kelly?

Abstain.

And Chair Crawford? Aye. Motion passes.

Okay. So let's see. Staff comments, correspondence?

No staff comments.

Okay. Chair's report. I don't have one. Commission announcements, comments, and reports? Who would like to speak? Yes. Yes.

I have a couple comments. One is for the staff. I think what would be really helpful for the public is to have any presentations linked in the online agenda, even if it's the day of. Presentations don't have the same, I think, uh brown act requirements that they have to be posted a certain number of days in advance they can just be published at any time so i think that you know oftentimes we have the privilege of having printed out presentations here we can flip through the pages but i think the public would also benefit of having these posted online as well so they can have what's available to us right i think that would be very transparent so is that that's something you could do without any direction

Usually, if you get them, we have copies in the back for those in the audience in person. But the online version, I'll have to talk to Edmund's tab. It can be done for sure.

That's just one comment I have, just to make sure everyone has equal access to what's printed here if you're in person versus online. I think my other comment, too, is maybe more for all of us here. I don't know if there's a way we can communicate in advance of this commission meeting, how much time applicants and appellants will have to speak before us so they can come organized with a presentation if they want. But I just feel like communicating that in advance will allow them to prepare to put their best case forward to us. And that way it's consistent. That way every month or every couple weeks when we hear some of these things, we say, okay, when you come to the Alameda County Planning Commission, you're going to get your 10 minutes and make your case and you know, and that way we're sort of treating all applicants and or appellants equally and that people just have an expectation. And I'm not saying that has to be in our bylaws chair, but I just, you know, sort of just maybe a best practice that we can have. And then, you know, you're going to speak before or after public comment. It's the same every time. You know, so just because I've seen some folks come in like, I think we've had other projects come forward where they just sort of weren't ready to speak. They didn't really know how much time. And we were just sort of like, and that way the secretary can communicate to the applicant, look, the planning commission is probably going to give you your 10 minutes. You should probably like make use of that. Here's how it's going to go. So just a comment from me that I like the idea of us giving that transparency to our, to our folks coming to us with a project.

Are you saying on appeals only or like when people have applications as well?

Well, I mean, I think you can do both. I can you say normally when it's just a straight up application, you get your number of minutes. I'm not saying 10 is the number. I'm just saying like, you know, you just say you should come prepared because you can give these folks more minutes than you give the general public comment, like the general public comment. But it'd be good to at least round it out with saying you're going to get your five, seven, eight, nine, 10 minutes. you should expect that, prepare that, come ready to, whether you have a presentation or not, at least you come in ready to go. And if they don't utilize it, they don't have to, nothing makes them have to, but at least there's a community expectation that when we have a project before us, there's a set time that you can take for a presentation. I think we'll get, I think actually we'll get better applicants in front of us too. I think they'll give us better information if they know that like they have that time. I think they sort of, come in here, don't know what to expect. Staff isn't really communicating an expectation. And they sort of, I'd be fumble the ball. I would say at times when people come before us, put their best foot forward.

I think we've, I understand what you're saying. And I, so, so, so the, I think the problem that, you know, arises out of that, setting that up like that is when you have a situation where you have an applicant and you have a room full of neighbors and And they all get three minutes and they're going to talk for 20 of them are going to talk for an hour and you've given the applicant, you know, 10 minutes. Um, so I think we've always kind of just left that open. Um, so that we can sort of adjust it on a case by case basis. I think on appeals, it's a little bit more straightforward. I don't really have a problem with them saying maybe 10 minutes each side on appeals or something like that, but I don't think it would be fair to limit an applicant to 10 minutes and then the opposition. an hour, you know, 20 people at three minutes, that would be my problem with you rebut as an applicant, how do you rebut an hour?

I think what I've seen, again, in other jurisdictions, where you only give the applicant five minutes, I'm not saying we get five, but I'm saying like, the, the, the body can call up the applicant to ask questions of them and say, you know, I heard these public comments here today. Do you have anything to add to your previous presentation that would address those comments? There's a way for them, this body could kind of do that. If they felt it was fair to clarify any details of the presentation that weren't clear, maybe the public felt misinformed, there's opportunity for us to bring them back. And in that way, there are limited

based on answering our questions you know they can't keep going but at least it's a fair opportunity that we could sort of use our own discretion on yeah and you may want to give them a time on to rebut as well because we always let the applicant come back up and address the issues that have been brought up so what timeline do you put on that after 20 neighbors you know you say it's five five five five for the applicant five for the

I'm going to peel the pellet and then five to rebut. Like we kind of do it that way. And then you could do like questions to clarify, but at least there's an initial bound of just not a runoff. You come really prepared for your, you know, standup comedians call their type five, but you have your, your best pitch, your elevator pitch. And then you're sure right in chair. And I've seen you do this well. And when we have a big room, you say, you know, instead of three minutes, we're going to get to two and a half or something. You can kind of modify the, the, everyone's time so that we can make sure we get through the meeting.

And the time could be modified. So yeah, I mean, that's something we can talk about if we want to try to set up some structured times. Staff wants to bring that to us at some point and kind of kick it around, see what there's a support to do there. Any other commission announcements?

I just have more of a comment if I may. In terms of the minutes, I appreciate, like others, the detailed minutes.

I think that provides.

I think what staff wants to move towards is a more standardized format of the meetings. And I believe there was going to be a memo that was going to be circulated or shared at But I wonder if there is examples or a template of what a standardized meeting minutes look like. Does the memo include that?

It sure can, yes. I think that, I mean, I know that the county has proposed changing minutes over the years. It looked like there was a memo that came out from the county minister's office that asked for standardization of minutes, which would be action minutes. Essentially, there was a vote in favor of staff or against staff or carry the staff recommendation or what have you. And so that's roughly the template that exists for the board of supervisors, for example. um i know that the planning commission likes more complete minutes and i think the way that we're doing them now is what you can expect going forward uh but if you if you want to see that memo i could forward it to you but it seemed like there really wasn't a whole lot of support i mean it's not a mandate um i think that the county administrator may have pitched it as a mandate at one point, but then it became more of a recommendation. So if there isn't really support to go to action minutes, then it seems like you just keep doing what we're doing if you like the way that they're written. It's a little easier than it used to be with this narration that we have, and AI can summarize pretty good pretty quickly nowadays. So I don't do them, but from what I've heard, that they're a lot easier than they used to be.

I think the County administrator is under the assumption that the video is flawless when it is oftentimes not, uh, especially when these microphones are cutting out. And if you're watching a hearing, uh, online, it can be very frustrating. Um, and so going, so re over reliance on going back to those recordings when say half the words spoken weren't even recorded and not having accurate extended minutes, I don't think would be an improvement, uh, Andy?

Yeah, I don't want to get us in trouble for getting into discussion on this, but I do think it would be something that maybe clarifying that in our bylaws would be helpful. I will also say, having been on the Planning Commission for 10 years, trying to go back to something that was three years ago and recall what was discussed is a lot easier when there are actual minutes. And the planning commission is much more complex than most of the citizen commissions, which advise on far simpler issues. But I've heard many times said here and elsewhere that having members of the public review the recording is somehow more accessible. And I don't believe that to be true. It is nice that it exists, but what is more accessible is for someone to be able to go and search and see who voted how and when and what they said, not to sit down and watch a four-hour meeting to find an answer. Like, that is actually quite a big barrier, and I don't think it's intended to be such, but... go and watch a five-hour meeting sometime trying to figure out who made a motion. And it was very quickly clear that that is not a more accessible format than having good minutes.

One thing County Council can correct me if I'm wrong here, I just wanted to be, which commissioners can at the July 6th meeting, because I'm getting some, because staff had sent me the agenda today for approval and I hesitated to send it back in knowing we're gonna have this meeting and we start getting into summer, people aren't able to attend. So is there any violation of the Brown Act for me to ask the commissioners if they can attend the July 6th meeting?

Ask them now?

Yeah.

No, go ahead.

Okay.

Is this because you want to do a Brown Act training on the July 6th meeting?

Oh, the staff already has an agenda set up for that. I just don't know how many commissioners can appear for that. I know Commissioner Hernandez has already said she's not going to be able to be here. And I sort of got some information from other commissioners. They may not. So we may not have a quorum. Obviously I don't want to approve an agenda for a meeting. We're not going to have, but in the interest of efficiency, it'd be nice to be able to ask everybody here right now, but I didn't want it to be problematic.

I think that's appropriate. Okay.

Missioners, your availability for the July 6th. Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm sketchy, so I don't think we have four. I think that's the problem. So I think we'll just cancel July 6th and push whatever that is to the 20th, July 20th. Okay, with that, we are adjourned.

Bye, everyone.

Bye.

See you, Andy.