Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Welcome everyone to this, the Monday, August 3rd meeting of the Alameda County Planning Commission. If we go ahead and start by calling the roll. Although Hernandez is participating remotely, if my understanding is correct. Janet, if you could share with the commission the reason for your remote participation, please.

I'm not feeling well today.

Okay, great. So is there anything we need to do?

She needs to disclose whether there's anyone 18 years or older in the room with her.

There is no one in the room 18 years or older.

She can use the just cause exception to being in person today as a remote appearance and can be counted in the roll call.

Thank you. And Janet, we hope you feel better. We will go ahead and call the roll. And just as a reminder, that means that all of our votes today will be roll call votes.

Commissioner Hernandez.

Present.

Commissioner Nielsen. Commissioner Rocha. Commissioner Silva.

Sure.

Commissioner Zeiss. Sure. And Acting Chair Kelly.

Thank you. That brings us to our Pledge of Allegiance. thank you for that everyone and we will now have public comment if there's any public comment um general items on the agenda um i will just make a note that we will have an item at the end of the agenda to adjourn for commissioner crawford who we lost this last month i'm an opportunity for commissioners to make comments and worry but if there are any public comments on general items this evening, or any member of the public is wishing to speak, please hand the yellow card to staff, and then we will go ahead and recognize you. Any cards so far tonight? Unless there's any member of the public wishing to speak, or anyone online.

Raised hands online.

Great, there are no raised hands online, so I'll go ahead and move to close public comment. Item number two is our open forum. There are no open forum announcements today, unless I'm missing any from any of the commissioners. And seeing none, we can go ahead and move on to item three, approval of our minutes from our June 15th meeting. Is there a motion to approve?

I'll still move, although there's one minor correction. Commissioner Hernandez's last name should be a Z, I believe, instead of an X, where it says roll call commissioners present five. But having made that note, I move the minutes be approved.

Thank you for that motion with the correction. Commissioner Silva, is there a second?

Second.

Second by Commissioner Rocha. If we go ahead and call the roll.

Commissioner Hernandez.

Aye.

Commissioner Nielsen.

Aye.

Commissioner Rocha.

Yes.

Commissioner Silva.

Aye.

Commissioner Zeiss.

Yes.

And Acting Chair Kelly.

Thank you. We are now on to item number four, our consent calendar. There are no consent calendar items for this meeting. So we will move on to item number five, which is the election of chair and vice chair, which is an action item. Election of the vice chair occurs in July, but as we did not meet in July, that is to occur in August. Although I believe commissioner Silva had a proposition.

Well, I'd like to suggest, and I'll make a motion to that effect, that we continue the election of the chair until the two vacancies are filled. Commissioner Hernandez, sadly, is leaving us. And of course, we've lost Mark, sadly.

So we have those two openings.

And my thought is that we would continue the election until those seats are filled so that those people have an opportunity to vote on who will lead them. So having said that, I'd like to move that we continue this item until the vacancies are filled.

I can please comment on that. Melanie O'Brien, Deputy County Council. Your bylaws require that you hold annual elections in June every year. And it's the last meeting of June. We didn't hold elections on June 15th and we need to complete that process per the bylaws. And that's what today's elections are. So it would be my recommendation that you do conduct those elections today or else you're not complying with your bylaws.

Already outside of June.

Yes, and I don't recommend that you get further outside of it. Also, these are one-year terms. So the bylaws say that you have a one-year term if you're elected vice chair or chair, and then you'd be reelected in June. So the far, or not reelected, you would have elections again next year in June of 2027. So the farther that you go out, the shorter the term is going to be for those elected. It's meant to be a one-year term and we should get as close to that as we can. Can you speak into your microphone?

The circumstances that we're under without having a full board and so quickly lose off of the sport would think would justify us or have to give us reason to.

And I'm just telling you what your bylaws say and what I recommend.

Second the motion.

Needs to become public comment also on this item. It's an action item.

Are there any members of the public wishing to give comment on this item?

No raised hands online or in the room.

Oh, I'm sorry. For this item? I'll have the card. So if you just want to say your name and then you have your time to speak.

My name is Andrew A. Turnbull. I live in the spectacular unincorporated area of Sonola, California. And I recognize my close friend of long time Rodney's eyes on this board. I understand the county council calling for what seems to be the rules, but under the circumstances, I think the judgment of this board ought to take precedence, because you clearly would like to see a full group. You'd clearly probably like to get a sense of what that leadership might look like. And so as a member of the public, I'm going to just simply Chairman Kelly for tonight, say that I support this position that you delay this as you bring people on, on behalf of the board members. Thank you for your respect and attention.

Thank you for that comment. Are there any speakers online wishing to give comment?

No online speakers.

Seeing none, I'll go ahead and close public comment. Before we proceed with the vote, if I could ask County Council, I believe that if we were to pass this and not vote tonight, that I would continue to act as chair until we did elect a chair and vice. Then there would be no vice chair. And so if I was sick or unable to attend a meeting, the body would be unable to meet.

There would be nobody under the bylaws who is a designated officer in that situation that would be running the meeting. So that would present a problem. So let me just clarify. There are two processes at hand here, okay? One is that when the chair is not able to act, the vice chair automatically becomes the chair. And in this situation, we know that the chair is not going to be resuming acting. So the vice chair is the chair and there should be an officer elected vice chair. Then separate from that, in these bylaws, regardless of anything that has taken place recently and unfortunately, there is elections that are to be held every June. So you should consider the fact that you have one officer outstanding if you do continue today's motion and who you would want to select now potentially to serve as vice chair. You could just take action today on just appointing a vice chair and then continue the election for the chair for another day. That's fine. You're not obligated to act on both today just because they're on the agenda both as action items today.

I have some clarifying questions. Yeah. Does the staff have any... A notion on when the board of supervisors will be filling our current vacancy. And I know our future vacancy with commissioner Hernandez. So leaving the, and so the sense of when that, those two seats will be filled.

I have no information on, on that.

Okay. I'd like to offer some thoughts. I don't actually know how long my seat was empty before it was filled, maybe a few weeks or months. Yeah, and so, you know, I filled out an application process. I went through a couple of interviews and then an appointment process with the clerk. So I guess, you know, one concern I have with the motion on the table here is not that I don't actually sympathize or partially agree with it, but that this may leave us in a situation for a few months. We might be getting towards the end of the, you know, fall here before we, you know, come back and figure this out. So... That's where I'm kind of wrestling with this. If this was a question of we knew we'd have something in place by the next meeting, I'd be like, yeah, this makes a lot of sense. But if we're getting into November and then it's Thanksgiving and then Christmas and it's like, wow, has the board of supervisors going to fill this by the end of the year? I don't know. I remember the process I went through, which was a good process. I thought that they wanted a lot of applications. They wanted to do interviews. What a good process.

Chair, bylaws, if I recall in the bylaws, it says that the chair, if not present, the vice chair would take over. And then it follows up on that. And it says it could be past officers, and I think it would go by sonority after that, if I recall. Correct? There is information after that. The vice chair is not there. And the chair, it has no process that goes beyond that.

As it says, the most recent past chair present shall select one of the members to preside over that meeting until the chair or vice chair arrives. The most recent past chair. That makes things complicated. And to that end, I would recommend that we revise these bylaws when it's agendized properly. So we have clear succession here and a plan in place that is not depending on the most recent past chair's input. But what is to happen today is that in the event the chair resigns or is no longer a member of the commission for any reason, the vice chair shall assume the office of the chair and the commission shall elect a new vice chair at the next meeting or as called by the chair for the remainder of the previous chair's term. So in essence, it would be prudent for you today to elect a vice chair. And if you want to, despite what I've said about the June annual elections, postpone the chair's election and have the vice chair slash acting chair act as chair until then you could make that motion but i would recommend you put some parameters around that um just as um commissioner rocha pointed out these are circumstances beyond your commission's control as to when those seats would be fulfilled um and obviously this is you know subject to you being able to elect a vice chair today um

So there's a motion on the floor, which has a second. If there's more discussion, I'm happy to allow that. I would just ask to clarify, my understanding is the most recent past former chair is Commissioner Goff, who's no longer on the commission. So there is no most recent former chair currently on the commission?

I think any way you look at that, there is nobody to fulfill that role, right?

That does make me nervous. As the last year's evidence, not only can we lose people unexpectedly, but, you know, I was injured. And I don't know what the process is and what the board has to do if we end up not being able to meet. Also would be nervous about potential for litigation, controversial discussion. I'll defer the rest of the board wants to do. I do feel if we aren't going to have the elections tonight to being... Sorry. That we should definitely appoint a vice chair.

That would be- Propose a friendly amendment.

I'll accept that, sure. Does the original second chair have the motion to concur? Concur. Great. So the motion on the table is to table? the election of the chair and to elect a vice chair this evening? Am I summarizing the motion correctly? Yeah. And there's a second on that. So if we go ahead and call the roll.

Commissioner Hernandez? Aye. Commissioner Nielsen?

Yes.

Commissioner Rocha?

Yes.

Commissioner Silva?

Yes.

Commissioner Zeis? Yes. And Acting Chair Kelly?

Yes. So with that, the motion is carried, which means the election of the chair will be tabled until some subsequent meeting. We should have included a date for that, but we did not. So we are on to the election of the vice chair. Any member of the commission may nominate any member of the commission, or you may nominate yourself. Are there any nominations for vice chair?

If I may, I'd like to nominate Ryan Nielsen for vice chair.

Ryan Nielsen, do you accept the nomination?

I accept the nomination.

Are there any other commissioners wishing to nominate anyone for vice chair? Okay, seeing none, I believe the procedure is to move to close nominations. So I moved to close nominations for vice chair. Do we have to vote on that?

You should vote on that, but you should take public comment first.

Apologies. Are there any members of the public wishing to comment on the election of the vice chair? Are there any members of the public online with their hands raised? No members of the public online. Seeing as there's no public comment, we'll go ahead and close the nominations of the vice chair. We don't have to vote on that.

We'll vote on that, and you should get a second if there's a motion.

If someone would please offer a second. A second. Great. If we could go ahead and please call the roll.

Commissioner Hernandez. Aye. Commissioner Nielsen.

Appropriate for me to recuse myself since it's me.

You can vote.

Aye.

Commissioner Rocha?

Yes.

Commissioner Silva?

Aye.

Commissioner Zayas?

Yes.

And Acting Chair Kelly?

Yes. Do we now need to vote to elect the Vice Chair even though there's one nominee? Now we have to vote to elect the Vice Chair, right? It's not automatic with the nominations closing.

I don't think you need to take that vote. I think you've elected your vice chair.

Congratulations, vice chair. Thank you.

And with that, we can move. Chair Kelly.

Yes, sir.

If I may, please.

Absolutely.

Thank you. I'd like to ask council, if I may, that forever the chairmanship of the planning commission when it was passed on on a seniority basis, it would rotate to the next senior person and so on. You look doubtful about that.

That's just my face. I'm listening.

Go ahead. Okay. So my question is, is that in our bylaws? Or apparently it isn't. Okay, so if we wanted to, if we as a group decided that we wanted to go back to that, what would be the process that we would, if we decided, you know, maybe we can agendize this and say this, we want to go back to where the chairmanship is passed to the next senior person, what would be the process to implement that?

We'd want to amend the bylaws to state that process so it's being followed routinely and orderly. Might I just say, and I've already said this, I recommend you amend your bylaws to clarify this process. We tend to discover things as we go that things aren't functional. They're just on paper until we need them. So that would be something that you would agendize for a later date, discussion, re-amendment of bylaws. I'd like you could suggest that would be in there. and we could work to put that together. Your bylaws do not require approval by the Board of Supervisors. You can do that on your own motion.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Gilley. Thank you, Commissioner Silva, and I will work with staff to have that agendized for the future. With that, we are on to item 5B, which is consideration of the elimination of site development review permit requirements for equestrian uses. Christine has a presentation for us.

Yes, Christine green planning department here to present consider elimination of the site development review for equestrian uses. Okay, there's several reasons why this item is before you this evening. First, equestrian operations are recognized as an important community asset and a longstanding agricultural use in the county. Secondly, both the Castro Valley Municipal Advisory Council and Planning Commission members have expressed support for eliminating the site development review requirement for equestrian uses. Additionally, the Transportation and Planning Subcommittee of the Board of Supervisors directed staff to begin the process of eliminating the Site Development Review requirement. In 2004, the conditional use permit that was previously required to open a boarding and writing academy was converted to a site development review process the intent was to make it easier to operate and get approval for horse facilities while still addressing concerns that are raised by public agencies that include public works, environmental health, the fire department, zone seven, and to ensure that there is compliance with the Williamson Act contracts. The zoning ordinance, there's a list of permitted uses under the agricultural district. In the permitted uses in the zoning ordinance, it lists grazing, breeding, or training of horses or cattle. Further down, it lists boarding stables and riding academies are subject to a site development review, subject to five requirements. One of those being that the facility would be in compliance with the county policy of equine facilities and the agricultural district. There are several agricultural uses that are also listed as permitted uses that do not require discretionary review, such as grazing of smaller animals such as goats, and also a winery is a permitted use. Zoning ordinance does define a boarding stable and it defines it as any premise where more than four horses not owned by the owner or occupant of the premises are boarded, kept or otherwise maintained as contrasted with the open grazing or pasturing of horses. The ordinance does not define riding academies, breeding or training of horses. Pros and cons of having this site development review application include that one benefit is that planning staff acts as a project manager and they assist in the applicant navigating through the multiple departments that are required to achieve approval of a site development review. And it also ensures that the county requirements are met through the site development review application. If the site review application was to be eliminated, it would save time and money for the applicants, it would streamline small operations, it would support continued horse-related uses, and it would align with county goals to preserve agricultural lands. This would not eliminate regulatory oversight, it would eliminate one discretionary layer. this is pursued then the documents that would need to be updated include the zoning ordinance the policy that was adopted by the board of supervisors in 2004 would need to be updated or rescinded and planning staff would need to update the other county agencies of the new process This is an example of SAS recommendation for possible updates to the zoning ordinance. One suggestion is to include boarding stables and riding academies at the end of the permitted uses that are currently listed in the a district after the grazing breeding or training of horses or cattle or boarding stables including riding academies. Elimination of the section that requires a site review for boarding stables would need to be eliminated. And the current boarding stable definition would be need to be eliminated and or a new one should be or could be drafted to help staff navigate through the uses. tonight i am looking for comments recommendations from the planning commission on the next steps to update the zoning ordinance and what to do with the equine policy and this will allow planning staff to report to the transportation and planning subcommittee with the planning commission's input as well as the agricultural advisory comments that were received in February. And if the support is, if there's support for this and that there's no longer the site review requirement, planning staff would go through the public process again with the exact changes. We would start with the agricultural advisory council for an action item on their agenda, come to this board for their action item, and then go to the full Alameda County Board of Supervisors. That's the end of staff's presentation.

Thank you for that presentation. Before we move on to public comment, if any commissioners have comments or questions so far, we'll have public comment after we'll have commissioner discussion after public comment as well. But are there any clarifying questions for staff before we move on?

If I may, can I ask you to go back to two more pages from the very end? I just want to read that again myself while we talk. I just want to be able to read that page again.

A little unsure procedurally on how we are to handle this, but we did receive a request from Larry Gosselin, who serves on the Ag Advisory Committee and the Equine Technical Advisory Committee to give us a slightly extended public comment. Can I just allow that during public comment?

If you allow public comment to be extended for Mr. Gosselin, you have to allow extensions for any other person wanting to speak.

Okay. All right. be a long meeting but um i did tell him that we would allow him to have up to 10 minutes um and then commissioners can ask questions but i think some context would be helpful for this so if you want to are at the podium there just to be clear are you opening public comment yes and i'm also opening public comment uh first thing i'd like to do is to uh thank planning staff for working with the agricultural advisory committee and stakeholders regarding this important matter i'd also like to thank

this Planning Commission for having the foresight to recognize that this was a matter that was put before them, should be put before the Transportation and Planning Committee. So as a result of that action, an ad hoc committee was created to work with staff. That ad hoc committee included me, Dan Devaney, who is sitting behind me, Andrew Turnball, who is sitting to the right of him. We did some pretty productive work and made quite a bit of progress in the work that we did. Specifically, I'd like to address today the Ag Advisory Committee's role in planning and how we fit into this process as well as planning in general. I'd like to address the county and state requirements for consistency when planning, and I'd like to discuss the structure of a proposed amendment intended to fulfill the direction provided by the Transportation and Planning Committee. Your commission to move in that. Certainly my understanding is that the Agricultural Advisory Committee will be convening a meeting at the back, I'm sorry, Max. We'll be convening a meeting at the MAC so that we can efficiently receive input along with staff regarding their opinions and we'll be inviting other interested people to that presentation and that convening. That being said, the Agricultural Advisory Committee has a role with planning that was actually determined by the citizens of Alameda County through the initiative known as Measure D that was passed in the year 2000 panel of experts was created to provide advice specific to the enhancement of agriculture and conservation of resources. That board was put together, has quite a few members, and we meet on a relatively regular basis. The powers that we have been inside are to take a leadership position, the enhanced agriculture specific... and conservation matters. The work that we do quite often seems to be out of sight and out of mind, but it's actually worked its way into the ordinance in quite a few different ways. And this is an example of the work we do and the tenacious attitude of us farmers and ranchers who can stick with the process over decades to hone it to what we want. So the... Oh, that work and moving into the ordinance, an example of that is the farming rights ordinance. The agricultural advisory committee has actually been assigned a mediation role, quasi judicial role. And once again, advisory only. We recognize that our crown is relatively small. But that being said, we've discovered that the horse community and surrounding neighbors are in a relatively peaceful state in Alameda County. There's very, very few conflicts between horse operations and the public. So regarding the necessity of intervention and regulations of the horse industry, it certainly isn't warranted in terms of from the public. In fact, in 25 years since the Ag Advisory Committee was approved or passed and formed, there's only been one case regarding a conflict between a horse owner and the neighbor. And so I think that should be taken under consideration. regarding the concept of consistency. Consistency is a requirement of the state of California. The consistent requirement calls for the general plan of each county to be consistent across its rules and regulations. The general plan, and council may want to clarify this a bit, the general plan is to not create conflicts and it is to operate Again, the purposes of Measure D were to enhance agriculture and agricultural lands, as well as preserving conservation resources. We meet that objective well. As far as I know, there have been no incidences of environmental contamination that have come from horse facilities that certainly have required extensive remediation. I know of none at all. So there is a or an acceptance of Measure D as to the value of agriculture in conserving open spaces and defending the urban limit line that is being met, and the horse community certainly addresses that. Despite that, we have had rules and regulations that continue to be imposed, and those regulations are enforced stringently and without or with broad discretion. and the parts of representatives from different departments. That enforcement has been so significant that it's contributed to the decline of the horse industry in Alameda County. I've mentioned sitting on the board of zoning adjustments in the 14 years that I was on that board, it was not unusual to have horse facility applicants come up before us and when they recognized a sympathetic year, break down in tears regarding the process. So that process continues to cause the frustration that I'm describing now. So, again, the horse industry has been recognized as being a part of agriculture. Specifically, Measure D-2022 came back and pounded the nails in the coffin by claiming or proclaiming that harvesting vegetables was akin to agriculture in the same manner that horse boarding. In the agricultural element that's in the general plan. So regarding the structure of a proposed amendment, the Ag Advisory Committee has thought about this quite a bit, and we believe that the process is ripe at this time for a recommendation that there be an amendment to include horse boarding and equestrian, I'm sorry, I'm flummoxed right now, horse boarding and equestrian Events, not event centers. What's the other one I'm looking for?

Riding academies.

Riding academies. Thank you. So horse boarding and riding academies be exempted from the SDR requirement and that appropriate definitions be developed before the amendment to make the general plan consistent with the requirement of no SDR requirements. So that would be the first step. It's been recognized that there's heavy lifting that's required to go on to the next step. The next step is a requirement to review all the policies of the departments, bring consistency between those requirements and the general plan, and then move that forward as a separate amendment for the Board of Supervisors to approve. So again, definitions and an elimination of the site development review process is something we're ready for now. If you'd like to make that recommendation, it will be brought forward in the convening of the Ag Advisory Committee to the participants at that meeting for feedback. And again, definitions will be defined by that time and presented to them so that you can have those definitions for review.

Thank you, Dr. Gosselin, for your comment. Are there any other members of the public wishing to make a comment this evening?

I don't know how much time I have, but if I'm running long in the mouth, please just give me a signal and I'll stop. Thank you, Christine, for all the work that you've worked on to move this initiative forward. I was last here before the Planning Commission almost a year ago in September. And in that meeting, we floated the idea of what's the appropriate role for the planning department within the ongoing regulation of horse boarding and riding academies. In that meeting, we talked about the 11 permitted uses in the agricultural zone. I don't think we talked about the 24 conditional uses, everything from cemeteries to flight strips to communication towers to slaughterhouses, so on and so forth. And the recommendation was only to make a change to one of those uses and to make it a straight up permitted use. Although it is a permitted use, it's a permitted use with a dotted line requiring a site development review. We talked about the impacts of the other agricultural uses and the fact that perhaps a CAFO could have much more significant environmental impact, a poultry operation, a dairy farm. uh, wineries perhaps, and none of those require site development reviews. So those are just straight up permitted uses. Believe me, all of these entities have regulation and nothing that we're proposing diminishes the ongoing regulation. from public works, from environmental health, from so on and so forth. It really just tries to redefine planning's role in this. So after that meeting, we then went to T&P. They were very enthusiastic. They felt that to be consistent with the general plan, be consistent with Measure D, as Dr. Goslins pointed out, that was reaffirmed in 2021. that really we should be adopting state minimum requirements as it relates to agricultural operations. And there is not a state minimum requirement that an SDR is required. One of the problems with this is that it's not only an SDR requirement, but it's an ongoing review of an SDR. And Often that can be done at the staff level, but not always. Sometimes if there's a complaining neighbor, it might go to public hearing. If there's a change of ownership, it might go to, to public hearing. Uh, frankly, far before joining the, the, the Castro Valley Mac, I probably should have said that at the beginning, although, although I think most of you know that I do sit on the Mac, but I'm here in my personal capacity. Um, That was the number one problem that I had from my friends and neighbors was the unpredictability and the difficulty of going through a renewal on a business that they've been running for years and years and years. In our prior meetings, the MAC, the Planning Commission and Transportation Planning, we had a lot of public testimony. I didn't ask anybody to come tonight because I think you guys have heard the stories. You've heard the stories of people having to get a plot map of a property that's been in their family for 40 years and have been operating for 40 years. And they don't need to spend $25,000 on a survey. The fact that an onsite wastewater treatment system might has to be reanalyzed. At the end of the day, there may be no changes that are enforced, but you still have to hire the consultant. You have to pump out your takes. You have to analyze your leach field, depending on what the consultant. It could easily be $10,000, $20,000, only to put it all back together again. And I'm not required to do that. I live on agricultural property. I run cattle. I run sheep. I could have impacts. I don't ever talk to the planning department. I don't need to talk to the planning department because I don't have that. There's also a great inconsistency between a permitted use that has to do with the grazing, breeding, and training of horses or cattle versus these riding academies, which the two uses are so tangential. The horse doesn't know if he's a racehorse or if he's a dressage horse. The care is the same. The facilities are the same. You know, the feed, the vet, the riders, the barns, they're the same. One of them, because somebody 20 years ago made a determination that a racehorse could be a commodity. Therefore, if it's racehorse training, it doesn't need an SDR. So that definition, Dr. Larry's always talking about definitions ad nauseum, it drives me crazy, but they become important. because somebody made a definition that this type of horse is not ag. I'm going to say horses are ag, ag, ag, and they ought to be allowed. So I think it would be very advantageous. It'd be very consistent with our general plan, with Measure D, with the right to farm, that if we didn't have ongoing SDR requirements for that portion of the horse world. This is a policy choice. Is it appropriate for the planning department to be part of the ongoing regulatory regiment of these facilities? I suggest no. That there's equities of the other regulatory agencies and it ought to remain there. I don't think there's a compelling public interest on why planning should continue to be involved with this and have a five-year renewal on it. So thank you for your listening. And then I'm available for any questions should any of you have any.

Thank you for your comment. And if you could make sure to fill out a yellow card and hand it to staff, that would be great. Just for the record, are there any other members of the public wishing to give comment? You may approach the podium.

Greetings. My name is Andrew A. Turnbull. I've been a resident of Alameda County for 51 of my 65 years. And it was when I bought my first horse in 1999, January, I became a customer of these kind of facilities and the breeders. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to leave my Silicon Valley home and buy a home in Sonola six months later, because I wanted to be near my horse. Thankfully, I also learned that if you put a horse under her first, the ring goes on easier. And my wife and I now enjoy both being horse enthusiasts. I've never made a dime in any of this kind of work. I happen to be the paid executive director and administrator of an international nonprofit called the International Horsemanship Foundation. And that might mean something to you because I've had a tendency to print color copies of things and send them to this board and send them to Alameda County and send them to all kinds of people because The fact is, horses are ag everywhere Old Glory flies. I want to draw your attention to the notes from the meeting, item 10A on September 15th, 2025. And I want to quote a moment that really was near and dear to my heart when Commissioner Ryan Nelson said, I think there's some definite clarification that needs to be made within the definitions. My first comment, Rodrigo, you mentioned that horses are not agriculture. Are you familiar with? It's been some time. But does the county recognize the 2018 Farm Bill and the definitions that are within it? The 2018 Farm Bill. Ryan Nelson knows what it is. And by the way, Alameda County knows what it is because we've made good and sure that they know about the 2018 Farm Bill. And he went on to say that it would be important Do you understand that anyone who owns a horse, a horse is now considered livestock and it's treated such as agriculture? Rodrigo said, I'll look it up. Would it be appropriate to change the definition of the purview of looking at this through an agricultural lens rather than through maybe a pet or a hobby type lens? You were really on, Ryan. Rodrigo noted, No, it doesn't seem like it's being applied here. I mean, you just did, you know, you just put this back together in some of your statement that horses weren't considered agriculture. It's absolutely not the case. All the tax benefits for moaning a horse can be written off with agriculture. They're not a pet. I think to agree, listening to some of the testimony here, I think here and maybe being in line with some of the other commissions here, there might be a bit a little of overreach on the Environmental Health Department. If somebody is looking to facilitate a boarding facility and they're all by means review their septic. But why are we going outside of that operation to house that? I think it was said from distance away that we have a functioning system and trying to make it updated. So. Thank you, Ryan, because you were certainly speaking my tune. And I would like to posthumously thank the late Mr. Crawford, who I did not have the opportunity in this life to know. But he was the one who took Mr. Dan Devaney's kind work, which, by the way, Dan, he made it clear. He's got no skin in this game. His skin is in helping Alameda County agribusiness. And you notice I have no skin in this game other than being a horse owner and promoting horse all over the world. But I also really, really strongly feel that Alameda County ought to be participating more in this 11.6% billion dollar a year industry just in the Golden State alone. That's horse ag, that's California. And the sooner we can do this, by the way, I thought it was pretty clear. I thought it was pretty clear nearly a year ago what was the order. And then David Halbert, who asked me to help these gentlemen, I'm in David Halbert's Alameda County, just like Rodney. We're both Sonolians. And he said, Andrew, could you help out with this? And I got involved. And I thought it was pretty simple. Somehow we have to go another round. Why can't we just get on with it and let the horse industry take full advantage of this, do the right thing, and do as you guys told to do with unanimous consent and in memory of your fallen leader, do the right thing because horses are egg everywhere Old Glory flies. May the horse be with you.

Thank you. for that comment, Mr. Trimble. And if you would like to give your handouts to staff, they can be included with the record since they were shared from the podium. Are there any other members of the public wishing to give comment either in person or online? Seeing that, I'm gonna go ahead and close public comment.

I'm sorry, I apologize. We do have some raised hands online.

If we could call the hands on.

Okay, Brenda Clark, go ahead. You have seven minutes. 10 minutes.

And as a point of order, the chair will mention to the members of the public, we did allow extended comment and all members of the public are entitled to have a 10 minute comment today, but all members of the public do not have to choose to use their full time, especially if it is an agreement with what has already been said. Thank you. Please proceed.

And it looks like Brenda might've dropped offline. So we'll go to Bob Clark. Go ahead, Bob. Bonnie, could you give Bob Clark permission to unmute? I'm not sure if I have the capability over here.

Thank you. Yeah, we have to have permission to unmute before we can speak. I appreciate that. have no have no uh problems with any of this regarding ag zone properties but in the 60 something page report they're uh embedded in that staff report is is quite a bit of discussion about uh also l or limited ag and in fairview where we live many of the properties uh are one to three acre property, some are five acre, and we are R1LBE, which is limited. There's only one ag property that I know of in Fairview. But by the fact that L is mentioned in this document, I've got a real problem with that scenario of eliminating CUPs because We have a very strict enforcement through our animal standards documents on the limitation of animals. And we are certainly not going to allow somebody with one acre of property to come up in here and put four or six horses on that property. Some of you may know the history of our area. back in 2010 through a misstep by Alameda County Sheriff's Department Animal Control. They allowed several residents to have an excess of In one case, 12 horses on a one acre property. And because of that, several other residents followed suit. And we had an issue up here for almost seven years of trying to get that corrected. It went all the way to the Board of Supervisors. And the Board of Supervisors gave these five residents free CUP applications. to try to make their case. And staff tried to make the case for them as well, bringing blight into our community for years and years until we finally got it hammered out. And those residents were required to reduce the number of their large animals to meet the standards. So I'm all in favor of what y'all are talking about from the agricultural zoning. but I want you to eliminate any reference to an R1L property. Keep the CUPs in effect and make sure that the residents that live in these areas have something to say about whether somebody can exceed the number of animals that are allowed. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner. If we could allow the next member of the public to speak, please.

Yes, Brenda Clark. Could you allow her to unmute? Brenda, go ahead.

Thank you so much. To echo what Mr. Clark said, who's my husband, we looked throughout the entire staff report, and there was reference to... the board warning direction on should we just remove CUPs would like to know the staff request direction on whether to keep the conditional use permit requirement in the L district. And if so, it should include additional performance standards to ensure compatibility with adjacent residential use. There is currently one performance standard in the L district 17, 2, 6 0 5. Oh, no kind of animals shall create dust and stuff, but that's not true. Uh, fair view specific plan has many, many pages, uh, uh, performance standards that cover everything. We worked hard on that. The sheriff's department, uh, did the draft. It was approved by the board of supervisors. It's, it's, uh, the fair view specific plan. And, um, the attachments, indices, A and B, which are part of the specific plan. So we just maintain that we leave that alone. If you want to say, except for Fairview, who has a whole lot more rules than that, and it is only specific to Fairview, but in any place in the county that's R1L, limited agriculture, which limits the number of animals they can have compared to agriculture. If somebody is in the middle of agricultural lots, either rezone their lot to add or have them fill out a CUP to allow more animals. That's all I got to say, but not in fair view.

Thank you for your comment. Do we have any other members of the public online?

we do yes um kelly a uh could you go ahead and unmute kelly thanks yeah um i do uh appreciate that there might be a difference between a cup and a site development review and a conditional use permit may still be needed in for r1l or whatever and and uh i think that this this is only this uh measure that they're we're talking about today is only is should only be talking about site development reviews And, you know, when we're applying the site development reviews, it seems like they're aimed at horses mainly when it comes to this stuff. And I don't understand that because, you know, if site development reviews are really needed, then they should be aimed at the pigs. They should be aimed at whatever animals that are indoors may be maybe at the chinchillas or the minks or whatever the animals are, or the chickens. The chickens are indoors, too. Whatever it is, you know, then there should be a whole list of animals that are getting site development reviews. And if it's only the horses, then, you know, that's not very... Why do those sites need development reviews and not the other sites that also have very intensive agricultural or entertainment related uses? They need site development reviews, too. So, yeah, I appreciate that the site development reviews, if they're good, they should be applied broadly. if they're needed and if they're not needed or if they're being narrowly applied to one industry, then, you know, and that industry is this the same as the other industries, I don't see that much difference between the horses and the llamas or whatever, then let's get rid of this narrow review and make it a broad review or make it no review. Thank you.

Thank you, Kelly.

Are there members of the- We have no other raised hands online.

that i'm going to go ahead and close public comment thank you to the members of the public um for your comments um and to the members of the advisory committees in particular for all the work always it's our work at the planning commission easier when other folks have taken a look at these things in much more detail before it comes to us um before we move to commissioner comments i did have a couple um Quick questions for staff on process. So our ask tonight is just to provide general feedback or we're being asked for a recommendation?

We're being asked for a recommendation. It is listed as an action item.

So if we desire to do so, we'll need a motion on that after comments, then that will be referred and eventually come back to us before it goes to the board of supervisors. With that, are there any members of the board wishing to make a comment or have questions for staff?

Can you please make sure to speak into the microphone? Thank you.

I have a unique background in East County. My family's been in agriculture since the 1880s when we came to this county. idea and and some obviously following along with the farm bill and different things that affect agriculture in this county i'm probably more on top of than some of the other people other commissioners within this and within this body um understand and i've sat through different processes that this county makes agriculture go through and i feel the embodiment of all the pain of um back and forth and multiple years of trying to get something done. Lifestyle husbandry is at the core of agriculture and the farm bill as presented earlier tonight, clarified what livestock is and that horses are a part of livestock and excluded it from being a pet and reinforce their status as livestock. And I appreciate the staff going back through and putting that into your presentation. The fact that horses are animals are kept and raised on farms and ranches is agriculture. In addition to, and I kind of wanted to cite as well, I didn't know how this was going to go down, but the federal labor regulations also confirm the same. Livestock includes horses and raising of livestock encompasses breeding, fattening, feeding, general care, code, CFR 780.120-780.121. Employees engaged in breeding, raising and training of horses on farms are agricultural employees. Furthermore, Boarding, housing, feeding, and maintaining horses not owned by the property occupant when more than four are present is simply practical expression of that care. It is not a separate commercial recreation overlay that must be treated as an accessory or discretionary as staff tries to state on page four. I believe that we can all agree that what has been expressed in the presentation is that cattle are livestock as well, and cattle grazing is agriculture and has a by-right association. Just to confirm, Alameda County considers cattle as livestock, correct?

Yes.

And additionally, the act of raising cattle on property is considered agriculture?

Yes, it's not. Discretion doesn't require discretionary permit.

You answered my next question there. Do I need to get permission from the county to raise care for cattle on an agricultural zone property?

Not from the planning department, but I would defer you or refer you to the agricultural. I don't know when they get involved.

In many cases, the answer is no. If you have rangeland or property that's owned agriculture you can facilitate in cases cattle are raised and cared for on a property that is differentiating ownership between the cattle owner and the property owner this does not change the cattle's definition of livestock nor does that change that it is an agricultural operation and therefore i'm trying to tie in the fact that cattle or livestock horses or livestock whether or not the property owner owns the horse or not it's considered livestock and the care of those animals is agriculture i'm sorry some of the stuff we've kind of already hit and other people have hit that the agriculture advisory committee correctly observed that these requirements have contributed The current SDR requirements have contributed to the decline of the equine industry and other intensive agricultural uses. Dairies, large poultry operations face no comparable planning SDR. We've heard that. It's a reoccurring theme. Eliminating the SDR aligns with the property rights of owners of agricultural land, and they should be free to put that land to productive livestock use without discretionary gatekeeping, so long as they comply with existing health, safety, environmental rules administered by multiple agencies. And I think it's important to note, looking back through what some of those other agencies are, and I don't know if you have an answer for this, staff, but when you hit a certain threshold of livestock confined 45 days without native vegetation, it gets into a different realm, right? That's generally CAFOs. I think I brought up at the last meeting we discussed about this. Nationally, I think that's 500. I can't remember exactly what it is in California. It could be 150 or relatively within those two numbers of where true permits are needed. Are there any horse facilities in Alameda County that have over 500 horses?

Not that I'm aware of.

Any horse facilities in Alameda County that have over 200 horses?

Not that I'm aware of.

So I would presume, and this may be, I don't know if we can go back out to staff they might know, or participants, what the average size is. But I mean, 150 or 200 horses is a substantial amount of horses. And at that point, we get to the aspect of where environmental health's trying to get involved, but that goes to, if you look at pollutant discharge, that goes to the State Water Resources Control Board, which would then go to our Regional Quality Control Board. And I don't know if anybody has ever tried to work with those agencies. They are on top of any type of discharge, malicious or not. It's a pretty robust very robust process. Again, I really went deep down in this. I'm going to just probably end with right here what I have at the end. Short Boarding facilities are livestock operations, raising and caring for horses, and should stand by on the same by right footing as grazing, breeding, and training. Eliminating the SDR requirement and following state standards advances property rights by restoring predictability and reducing costs and uncertainty for agricultural landowners. It supports the economic viability of rural land, which underpins the ability to maintain and, where appropriate, expand agricultural uses on ag parcels. It relies on existing agency oversight rather than discretionary planning review that can function as de facto policy restriction. As stated on page three, regulatory oversight would remain in place. The Planning Commission should recommend ordinance amendments that place boarding stables and riding academies among the principal permitted uses in agriculture district, update definitions accordingly, and rescind or narrowly revise the 2004 policy so that these uses proceed under ordinary building and specialized agency permits. Sorry.

Thank you, Commissioner. Other commissioners with comments?

Just on page three, and it's real simple, real quick. It says, eliminate SDR requirements. Could be beneficial in reducing applicants' time and costs, increasing predictability and streamlining, sorry, approvals of agricultural equine use. The changes would also support county objectives and preserve agricultural lands and ensure consistency. That line right there just basically says the whole thing. And you throw everything he just said, it's no brainer to me.

Commissioners?

If I may, thank you. I'd like to suggest, actually I have a question of, if I may, of Dan Devaney. Is it possible? Is that permissible?

I'm going to ask that if there are questions for the public, we ask them, then I'll open it up at the end. Because to reopen public comment, we have to let anyone give public comment, and I don't want to...

My suggestion is that, first of all, I'm very sympathetic to this. My suggestion, my hope is that the authors will agree to drop Fairview from consideration, from inclusion. Much of Fairview is ill-combining, limited ag. I happen to live in the middle of that. There's over 200 properties in the limited ag part of Fairview. Most of them, as was mentioned earlier, are an acre. Some are two acres, some go up to three acres. The thought that someone might be able to establish a riding stable on an acre in our community is terrifying. I don't think it's a reach. I'm hoping we'd find it's not a reach to just exclude Fairview. I understand that you can't or you shouldn't eliminate all l uh or just eliminate l combining districts from the wording because i understand in livermore there's at least one l combining property that would benefit uh from from being able to do this in the situation where it's located uh there there are circumstances that would make that okay but in fairview it's not the case so i'm asking that for example a sentence um On page one, staff is presenting proposed updates to the county's planning framework covering a question uses within the agricultural zoning district and combining L districts, not including Fairview. That would be my request. And then on page, similarly on page six, under discussion, The ordinance updates, this is what I would suggest. The ordinance updates are intended to ensure that any proposed or continuing operations of a boarding stable or riding academy facility can operate in the unincorporated areas of Alameda County, except from Fairview, without having to go through additional discretionary permitting processes that are not processes that are not needed. So that's my humble request. I'm

Thank you, Commissioner Silva. Commissioner Rocher, Commissioner Hernandez, do you have any questions for members of the public? If not, Commissioner Nielsen, if you want to also restate the question that you had asked, and then I'll reopen public comment briefly.

Can I ask a question of staff real quick? A question. As it relates to the L District, whether or not the SDR is required, there are still stipulations. And I think I read in here that one horse per 20,000 square feet. Correct. So is that, if that is true, anybody that's trying to facilitate something there would be in violation of that rule. And it wouldn't be able to, there obviously would be some type of restriction on that or punishment for that. Correct.

In the L district, they get or they could have one horse for every 20,000 square feet. So if they want more than that, then they ask for a conditional use permit to allow X horses on X size parcel. So the L district is still a conditional use permit. It's not a site review yet. Those were never converted. Those remain the same.

I think we're protected under the current verbiage. that you can't have, I mean, that's a half acre in essence, an acre is 43, 560, right? So one, two horses per acre. So in addition, if they're going to go above that, there's going to be a process for the conditional use that would come back through that neighbors would be able to facilitate for that process. I don't think what we're looking at currently is negating that or stripping that process from what is current. Correct.

There's no, I mean, in our packet, there's no proposed changes to the L district language. So it would remain the same. And the fair view appendix policies are adopted and in their specific plan, but staff was just wanted to get feedback from the planning commission. If they wanted what, what the input was for that. Cause that's a little special.

I guess my point is that I think we're covered for your concerns, Dale.

Yeah, I think we are too. I do have a question, if I may, of Christine. On page three, as was mentioned by a commenter, planning staff requests directions on whether to keep the conditional use permit requirement in the L district. So my answer to that is a resounding yes, that's our protection, right?

Yes, yes. Okay.

Okay, I have a question on another subject, if I may. Christine, one of the slides mentioned you were eliminating the definition of a boarding stable, which states that it's four horses or more that are paid for. Is that right?

Four horses or more that are not owned by the owner of the property. So if I have five horses, I don't need an application. But if I have five horses and I'm boarding five of my friend's horses, then technically I need to apply for a site review.

Why would you eliminate that definition?

Because the community thinks or believes that it's not realistic, that this is a normal pattern for me. If I own a ranch, I have room for 20 horses. I should be able to take in your two horses, Kelly's two horses, and it's too restrictive.

Let me run this by, if I may, back 12, 15 years ago when we had a problem, as was mentioned earlier, with some property owners having too many horses and they were under the table boarding them out. Having a definition of what a boarding stable was was very helpful. We could say that they were in violation. So will a definition of a boarding stable appear somewhere else?

I think staff would like to have a definition of a boarding stable in the definition section of the zoning ordinance, but it may be different from what's currently in the zoning ordinance.

Well, if I may conclude this with a recommendation that we establish a definition somewhere. Thank you.

Was there still a desire to reopen public comment from the commission? Okay, great. Commissioner Rocha?

I've been trying to listen to all the thoughtful comments here this evening, and I want to thank the folks who came out. Yes, I do think, I agree probably with the majority of folks here that we update these definitions, but how this moves forward to the Board of Supervisors for final approval, I think to my fellow commissioners point may need a definition, but I just want to make sure we're not discriminating on ownership, but it's use. If horses are allowed in one context, we should allow them in another context. I don't want to get too far away from that. What we're trying to do is maybe we were over prescriptive and we were discriminating against one use over another, but really the horse's use on this land, it seems to be, practice here that has gone on for many generations and apparently at a point in time we felt to regulate it a certain way and I'm not sure that really makes sense. So I tend to agree with most of what I've heard here today and probably be supporting a motion.

Thank you. Commissioner Hernandez, do you have any comments?

No, I have no further comments or questions.

Great. Thank you. Before we move ahead to additional discussion or potentially a vote, I just wanted to add my own comments, which is this makes sense to me. I mean, there were some funny things said in public comment, and I chuckled when someone said a horse doesn't know the difference between what kind of a horse it is. But I feel like we get into that situation a lot at the Planning Commission where regulation is defined something in such a way that it probably made sense when it was defined somewhere, but practically speaking, It's really not. It's a distinction without a difference. As someone who grew up in an agricultural community, literally in the last street in town before the fields, I was really surprised when we saw this item a while ago. And again, that we didn't define horses as agriculture. I thought that was very strange. And learning more about it, it was even more strange to me because I don't think any regular person in the community would think that horses were not agriculture. So this all seems to make sense. I think the conversation about L1 certainly should alleviate some concerns that some neighbors have, and we don't need to create additional burdens. It is interesting to me how few of these we've seen at the Planning Commission in my time. And I haven't, I don't think we've seen an appeal on it. at all, which makes me think the volume is discouraging. There's a lot of other things involving horses we have seen, but we haven't seen these issues come up on specific permits. So I guess there were a couple requests from commissioners to incorporate into our motion. I think Commissioner Silva You had mentioned excluding fair view, but I think with the conversation we had, you were comfortable as long as L one was maintained.

Yes.

That also you would like to see a definition of a boarding stable. Um, beyond that, I think the general sense of the commission was to support the staff recommendation, unless there were any additional additional conditions.

Sure. There's a true staff recommendation. I think we have to come up with this. Correct. because your recommendation was just to so to speak.

So the agenda says that you'll provide direction and comments to planning staff on revising the zoning ordinance and county policy for equine facilities. You don't necessarily have to take a motion today. You don't have to take action. Even though it's an action item, you could just, staff has heard what you had to say. It's up to you if you want to formulate that into a motion.

I do think it would be worth at least formulating into a motion, the sense of the commission that the site development review should be repealed. And perhaps if commissioner making that motion feels a need to incorporate other thoughts more specifically, but I think there's a lot of consensus on the planning commission and the community to move.

Wouldn't mind taking a stab at it. I'm not very good at it, but I'll take a stab at it. So I motion that staff remove the SDR requirement for horses and livestock in regards to agricultural uses, agricultural parcels, while maintaining the process for the L combining district and the Fairview requirements.

a second for that motion. Second. And I would just add as a comment that I think that should these regulation changes go through, we see the final draft, I think it'd be very helpful given the complexity of elements that are on these facilities. L1 elsewhere state requirements, I think it'd be helpful to have like a table or a chart for neighbors just to understand what additional regulations are already in place because there are a lot of guardrails that exist, but they're not specified in a way that's easy for the public to understand. And I think a lot of neighbor concerns that have been coming up are actually already addressed elsewhere in county policy. And I think it would help to address neighbors concerns just to make it easier for them to understand what is already there and not being changed. But with that, I will go ahead and entertain a roll call vote. If we could please call the roll.

Commissioner Hernandez. Aye. Commissioner Nielsen?

Yes.

Commissioner Rocha?

Yes.

Commissioner Silva?

Yes.

Commissioner Zayas?

Yes.

And Acting Chair Kelly?

Yes. With that, the motion carries and we thank the members of the public for their participation today. We are now on to item C, which is the unincorporated urban forest plan project update. Ali, if you would like to give your report.

Good evening, commissioners. Allie Abbers with the Planning Department. I'm just going to go ahead and share my screen.

And I wanted to note that I've made a few little changes to the slideshow here. So what you're seeing in your packet is going to be slightly different. I will make sure to post this version with the clerk. But just in case you're seeing something different, that is why to include some additional information. So as the chair mentioned, this is a presentation about the unincorporated urban forest plan. This is going to be the first of several presentations that we'll be making about this project, which has just begun.

So let's see if I can get this to go forward. All right, here we go.

So the EJ element is a document of the general plan that you may be familiar with. It was adopted in 2024, and that document directed staff to develop an urban forest plan, explore tree protection strategies, conduct an inventory of right-of-way trees, and evaluate and consider revising the county's right-of-way tree program. So in late 2024, CAL FIRE or the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection awarded the county $685,000 in IRA funds, that's federal funding, to support this urban forest planning work. And we had some delays with that federal funding, but we were authorized in July of last year to proceed with this project. We went through an RFP process and the board approved consultant contracts to support this work in March of 2026 and the program needs to be completed by March of 2028. And then just a note on what's on the slide here. Oh wait, let's see, this is what's on the slide. So it's a little bit different in your packet and I apologize for that. So there are two pillars of this project. So two key deliverables. The first is an unincorporated urban forest plan. And there are multiple pillars sort of within that plan. So it's a document, essentially, I like to describe it as a study and a set of recommendations. And woven throughout that is civic engagement. So deep civic engagement in urban forestry, multilingual outreach, and formation of a tree advisory group. So that study that I was talking about involves studying and documenting existing conditions. So that means assessing the county's tree policies, ordinances, plans, programs. So basically everything that we do that has to do with trees, staffing, et cetera, budgets, everything. inventory, a full inventory, the first ever, of all of the street trees in urban unincorporated Alameda County. And that inventory includes planting opportunity sites. and an analysis of canopy equity, urban heat, fire risk, and all of the other things you want to think about when you're considering increasing tree canopy. And then with all of that information and all of the public input that we'll receive throughout this process, we'll develop a set of recommendations that can guide how the county can meet its urban forestry goals. And then assuming we are successful and the plan is adopted at the end of this process in early 2028, we plan to host a 10 tree planting event to celebrate adoption of the urban forest plan and kick off its implementation. So that was the first pillar. That's the urban forest plan. The other pillar is the growing futures urban forestry job training program. And I will talk a little bit more about that in a following slide. so a bit more about the unincorporated urban forest plans geography so this is a map of the whole county um the the the dotted area is the unincorporated uh parts of the county about half the county is unincorporated land and then those green um boxes or shapes are the urban unincorporated areas of Ashland, Cherryland, San Lorenzo, Hayward Acres, Fairview and Castro Valley, the urbanized areas of Castro Valley. And that those areas, those urbanized areas, as defined by census, are the focus of the unincorporated urban forest plan. So I just wanted to give us a geographic setting there. The timeline, so as I mentioned, the project started just recently and will go through early 2028. We are at the very beginning where there's that red oval. We're in the summer now of 2026. We are beginning our community engagement, including meetings with the MACs, with your commission, Our community workshops, first community workshop is scheduled for later this fall, which I'll give you some dates on that later. And bi-monthly tree advisory group meetings. So that tree advisory group is a group of residents, content subject matter experts and staff who are going to meet on a regular basis throughout this process to help drive implementation, develop policy and come along with us on the entire process we are also in this moment working on our tree inventory i'll show you a slide of where we're at with that in a moment and we are working on our existing conditions study so we're really in the study portion of the program and in winter and spring we'll begin drafting the plan with all of the input and information that we've gathered, planning to bring that to your board and all of the MACs for recommendations in hopefully around this time next year with adoption anticipated, hoped for early 2028. So this is a new slide. This is our tree inventory. When I turned these in, I think we had inventoried just under 3,000 trees. We've now inventoried 4,700 trees. We are starting. This is a map that's kind of hard to see. It starts on the left side right along the Oraloma Marsh, moving west from the bay all the way through San Lorenzo. So we should actually be done with our San Lorenzo inventory later this week. And then we'll be moving on to Ashland, possibly Hayward Acres next to the south there, and then Ashland and Cherryland, and then finishing up in Castor Valley and Fairview. So we're scoped now to inventory 16,000 total trees, and that includes all of the street trees. So these are trees that are regulated by the Public Works Agency's right-of-way tree ordinance, and all of the trees in HARD's parks in the unincorporated area. So we have a partnership with HARD on this program. So a little more about the existing conditions study. We are doing this right now. We've conducted a suite of staff interviews with staff from across different agencies, including the Public Works Agency, staff that have whose work involves trees in one way or another. We are working on an analysis of programs, budgets, and staffing for all tree-related services and an analysis of county ordinances and regulations related to trees. And then I promised I would say something about the Growing Futures program. So we're really excited about this. This is a partnership with the Hayward Area Recreation and Parks District, or HARD, and with Merritt College. So this is a pilot program that will provide five to eight students over the next couple of years with fully funded arboriculture coursework. So that's coursework learning about tree health and everything related to caring for trees. They'll get hands-on field experience, educational stipends, and opportunities to join us and help shape the unincorporated urban forest plan by attending meetings of that tree advisory group. So this is a flyer for that program. We are actively recruiting participants right now. So if you know of anyone who lives in unincorporated Alameda County or environs who is interested in a career in arboriculture, this is going to be a great program. We're really excited. Please share this information with them and get the word out. So finally, just some information about, in general, how to participate in this program. So one thing you can do is join our listserv to receive regular updates and workshop announcements. All of our listserv information will be sent out in both Spanish and English. You can apply to participate, as I mentioned, in the Growing Futures job training program or share it with somebody who loves trees in your life. You can say hello to the tree inventory crew as they are doing their work throughout the urban unincorporated areas. As I said, they'll be moving into Hayward Acres shortly. And this link down here is a link to our project page, which has the links to all of the various ways that you can get engaged with this program. And I can just mention this is something I wouldn't have had to put on these slides when we turned them in a couple weeks ago, but we will be tabling at... National Night Out tomorrow in Ashland. So National Night Out in the park right across from Reach. So we'll be there from 6 to 8 tomorrow evening. And we have just booked our first public workshop, which is going to be the evening of September 29th. at the San Lorenzo Library. So I'll probably come back with announcements for that maybe during open forum at a future meeting. And that's all I have for that. I just wanted to mention that the next time I anticipate coming back to your body will be So I think after we have our tree inventory done, the existing conditions study done, so that we can bring you some of those findings and, you know, sort of take you along with us on this journey of sort of understanding what the county has, where we are now, so that when we start to develop policies, we'll have your input during that process too. So that's all for me. I look forward to taking your questions. Thanks.

Before we move to public comment, are there any clarifying questions for staff? Seeing none, I'll go ahead and open public comment. Any member of the public wishing to comment may approach the dais. Public comments will be limited to three minutes for this item.

I can do it in less than three minutes. Allie, congratulations to whoever was on staff that went and shook that money tree and got $685,000. This did come before the cast rally, Mac, and I asked Allie, isn't it a contradiction that Cal Fire is sponsoring a tree? She pointed out that it's actually the California Division of Forestry slash fire. So I guess it is consistent. The only criticism or recommendation perhaps that I would have if this project somehow gets extended. And there's a phase two of the urban forest plan. This is a $685,000 grant that we got of which more than 400,000 is getting paid to consultants to cut down trees and make pieces of paper and come up with reports. And I'd love to see if those dollars could go into trees. And I think that would be cool. And perhaps the county at some point as an extension of this effort can come up with a public-private partnership type of a situation. where the county is perhaps contributing a consultant and a tree expert to help with consumers or business owners, and then perhaps some kind of a cost-sharing plan to actually get trees in the ground. So that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you, Arthur. Please approach.

As stated earlier, my name is Andrew A. Turnbull, a 27-year a homeowner in Sonola, California. I think it's great. Good for you guys and good for this. I'm a little shocked that, what is it, two-thirds of the money is going to consultants. That's a little shocking. However, I'd like you guys to take a look at what we do in Sonola. We have a tree group. A gentleman named Jim O'Loughlin does a spectacular job working with that, but I wanna throw a caution to you also. Jeff Miller of Alameda County, of the Alameda Creek Alliance sued Caltrans for walking into Niles Canyon and destroying trees. And most recently, I encourage you all to review the most recent minutes when they come out of the Sunol Citizens Advisory Council because Caltrans once again destroyed trees in Sunol. So here we go. I think it's wonderful that you're having trees. Because by the way, trees are probably the second best thing for a person. Of course, we all know that the horse is number one. To that end, if the state's going to walk in and destroy trees, that's not good. And I think that everybody needs to pay attention to what happened in Sinaloa. I don't mind getting a transcript and printing it out and putting it in the mail to all of you if that's what you need to know, because you know what? The state ain't playing. The state is not helping. When they can walk in and tear down trees without reproach, the problem is you've got to make the wrong thing uncomfortable. And if they don't feel discomfort for that behavior, they will continue. So more power, and, of course, you've got a great planner. I always love when Allie is working on something, and good for the money, good for the people in the urban area. We understand it, Sunil. We love our trees. We're working on it. But put some protection in to stop people from messing with your trees when you get them done. Thank you for your respect and attention.

Thank you. Are there any other members of the public wishing to provide comment? or any members of the public online wishing to provide comment?

We have no raised hands online.

All right, hold on. I'm going to go ahead and close public comment.

Commissioner Zeis. This is a long time ago. I remember reading, don't we have an organization that is appointed for trees for Alameda County?

There is a Tree Advisory Board. It's convened by the Public Works Agency. It has a very specific role that involves hearing it has to do with public works agencies um right-of-way tree ordinance so if somebody violates the right-of-way tree ordinance and wants to to appeal um is you know is they get a notice of violation they want to appeal that notice of violation they go to the tree advisory board that is the role of the tree advisory board is to to make decisions about those appeals um They've not met since about 2023, I believe, was the last time that board met. And we have reached out. We reached out to the chair of that board and interviewed her as part of this process. So, yes.

I have a question. If I recall, it was East and West Alameda County had two different boards, if I recall, on that documentation. This was a couple years back, but I thought there was two separate boards. Yeah.

I'm not familiar with the second board. I'm only familiar with the Tree Advisory Board, and I thought that they were county-wide or unincorporated-wide.

A couple years back, I recall, I thought there was one on this side, the east, and one on the west. I recall. I admit it's been a couple years. Thank you.

Before we move on further, I would just add my understanding is that Tree Advisory Commission Council has been not fully... appointed for quite some time and as something as important as this document is moving forward i would really encourage um county staff to contact the supervisors who have not appointed to the board just to encourage them to fill it it's much more beneficial when we have a fully representative board advising us on something that's this long term and this important to the community before we move on to commissioner comments i just want to respond to I just want to make my own independent comment to one thing that was raised in public comment, which is the amount of money going to consultants. It is quite high. But I do just want to indicate one of the reasons why this is a really good first step is a lot of that money is going to the site's inventory, which is identifying where all the trees are and the... little teeny map that she showed with all those little dots it's so hard to under the powerpoint doesn't do it justice that's actually identifying where the trees are in a just system but what's cool about this funding round is now once it's done and we have all that data a big part of why um cal fire even structures some of this this way is it will allow the county in the future to access all kinds of other programs, all kinds of other funding opportunities when you can say this neighborhood near this freeway doesn't have enough trees, this neighborhood over here near the schools. So future programs should have a far higher percentage being allocated to actual trees. But it is a very high percentage to start with. With that, are there any commissioners who have additional comments on this item?

Commissioner Hernandez, I'm sorry. The street tree ordinance, does, you know, in San Lorenzo, we have a lot of trees in the front yard, but those aren't, I'm not sure they're street trees because they're not in the right of way. Good answer.

I do, and it's really a tree by tree answer, unfortunately. Because many of the unincorporated communities in the streets don't have sidewalks, it can be really hard to tell where the public right-of-way ends. Many of those, especially in San Lorenzo, you've got those London plane trees that are like the tree of San Lorenzo right along the front yard line. Many of those actually are in the public right-of-way. It just doesn't quite look like it. So there are part of what this... this program actually, the, the development of the, um, the tree inventory will, will help, um, the public works agency better identify the trees that are in the right of way, because that is, it is a hard question.

20 feet back from the street and until into my yard is the right of way.

It depends on the street. Um, so the public works agency has a road Atlas, um, that is a, um, an index of the width of every single road in the county um it's from it's sort of measured usually it's like 30 40 50 feet or something from the street center line you measure 25 feet out if it's 50 feet wide etc um it's not an exact science um but you can look at your street in particular and figure out how many feet it is and get a sense of where that is The best way if you are looking at your property, there's a few hints. So one is where are your utilities? So is there a utility pole? in your yard. If there's a utility pole in your yard, it's very likely that that's the public right-of-way. You can also, depending on the community, sometimes you'll start to see where your neighbors have put their front fences. Sometimes you'll even see survey pucks or survey markers. Those are the best way to know. Survey is really the only way to be 100% sure. But the location of public utilities, that's my best visual cue. And then ultimately, if somebody is trying to prune or remove a tree that they think might be in the public right-of-way, the public works agency that holds responsibility for enforcing that ordinance will have to make that determination about whether the tree is or is not in the right-of-way.

That was a little bit of a leading question, but the next thing... I think regardless of whether, because people in my neighborhood have trees at all variances in their front yard. Some are closer to the sidewalk. Some are back. I would hope the survey would actually just capture front yard trees generally, just because those feel, when you walk in your neighborhood, they feel like they're adding to that urban canopy and I'm not for the purpose of regulating everyone. I'm not trying to get anyone in trouble, but just, just for your surveying, you know, I would hope we would just capture that. And then if we see like neighborhoods with a lot of missing front yard trees and, and maybe their, their urban canopy can improve, it would help you develop policies that like, how do, how can we encourage more neighbors to plant trees in their front yards to create that nice environment? So, so hopefully your regard, again, I wasn't trying to get anyone, but regardless of where the tree is, that you're capture it. And then you, you can notice again, the houses that I know of some streets that like have wonderful tree cover and others, it's just barren. And it would, you know, it'd be useful as we develop the policies on the next step.

If I may respond. So I'll make a distinction between the tree inventory, which is that tree by tree, there's actually just one person walking all of the streets of San Lorenzo, the entire unincorporated area, and measuring every tree and looking at its health. So that's the tree inventory. And that's really focused on trees in the public right-of-way or trees that we... think are in the public right of way. And that person won't be going onto private property to assess folks' trees. However, part of this program also involves a desktop analysis of community-wide trees. So that's looking at urban canopy satellite view from existing data that are openly available to the public. And then layering that data with what we understand about social vulnerabilities of health, social indicators and economic indicators of health, urban heat island issues, and all of the other sort of vulnerabilities to layer on top of existing tree canopy so that we can start to really hone in on the areas of the county, of the unincorporated county where trees would be the greatest benefit. So that helps the county think about where to focus its efforts.

Commissioner Hernandez.

Thank you, Vice Chair. First of all, I just want to begin by saying I appreciate the progress the county is doing and moving forward to creating a more language-inclusive documents for our community. And great presentation too, if I may add. And the question that I have is on page 6. It said that the Growing Future program is a pilot program which will provide five to eight students with fully funded coursework. And I just want to know, how do we land on just five to eight students? Was it a funding issue? And I wonder why couldn't it be more?

Yeah, so it is a pilot project. So in part, it just has to do with the project team that's piloting this, having a manageable number of students to make sure that we are doing well by them in this project. And then in part, it is just where we've developed budgets that account for the amount of funding that we're going to need to fully support each of those students through the process.

Thank you. And then my if I'm one more question, if I may, page three, you said that we were going to host a 10 tree planning event. How we've identified and maybe you said this already, and I apologize if I missed it, the exact location and that being partnership with heart as well.

We have not identified the location, yet it's very possible that it will be in partnership with hard, but it's not necessarily so we just don't know yet.

Thank you.

Any other Commissioner comments question or silver.

To chair killing the question for alia apparently trees on private property or not being counted.

Not as part of the inventory. So folks won't be going on to anybody's private property to measure their trees.

No, when we're talking about urban forests, we're just talking about forests on public land.

Not exactly. So the inventory, which is that basically an inventory of public trees. So if you think of it as sort of like, you know, the county's taking stock of the trees that it has control over directly in the public right of way. But the study overall is really looking at community level trees. So it's doing an analysis of canopy cover overall. And that's basically like You think of canopy cover analysis as looking at looking from above, like looking from a plane at all of the areas that are covered by the that are shaded by trees. And that is regardless of whether they're in the public right of way or in private space. And it's not looking at individual trees. It's not getting to that level of detail, but really looking at how that canopy cover is distributed throughout the communities.

And then it does include trees on private property.

The analysis does, yes, but the inventory does not.

Okay, thanks.

Are there any other commissioner comments? Thank you for your work on this. This is an exciting program. I've seen a lot of other places in the county. The Cal Fire program is very good, and if you do well by it, there's more money there. The... impact trees have on quality of life is hard to overstate um everything from just being more pleasant to walk down the street to the fact that it actually cools the communities of state quality uh tremendously there were just a couple of of um thoughts i wanted to share on the presentation um in particular tree selection i know that cal fire will have like a qualifying trees. And we often encourage, you know, obviously to focus on tree roots and sidewalks, um, oxygen and air quality impacts, of course, as part of that and mess, you know, fruit and foliage, but, um, usually not included in that list of things to check for is sap. And there are some varieties of trees that Cal Fire permits that are just very, very sap heavy. Um, and some communities have put those in and greatly regretted it. Um, liquid ambers in particular are possible to clean up in the sidewalk. The other thing that I wanted to comment on is this is really great work that we're doing overall for the areas that we have control over. Something that had come up when the environmental justice element was going through related to trees was a consensus of the commission that we had wanted to see perhaps requirement for new development, especially large development, to have an increased size of trees, which is a very minimal cost, but has a much greater impact on the community. The number of those projects, both to provide some visual break from the street, but also a lot of the opportunity sites are in areas that are undertreated. And so there's a lot of room for synergy there. But this is, I think, really fantastic work and heading in a good direction. So do we need to take action on this today?

That's just informational.

So unless there are any other questions, Oh yeah. And then the last thing I was going to say is just the human aspect of this is, um, I've seen this done a lot of different ways where sometimes there's funding to go back and water the trees. Sometimes there isn't. Sometimes there's partnerships with nonprofits or neighbors or point person programs. But as we're building the bridge and walking across it, just to think about that, because the success rate of establishing trees in the first couple of years makes. And a lot of the times, um, you know, seniors and folks with like the least means to take care of those things benefit from them disproportionately, but also have a harder time taking care of that. And I think that sometimes the government, Doesn't think of the common sense things like in those materials, when we ask you to water the trees that go in front of your house, you know, to encourage people to check with their neighbors and see if they need help. That does make a big difference, but people don't often think like, oh, the 82 year old next door had three trees planted in front of her street that might not. But, you know, each other that way. Anyways, this is great work, and I think we look forward to the updates. Unless anyone has any other comments, I think we can move on to our final item on the agenda. Seeing none, we will move on to our last item this evening, which is, oh, sorry, not our last item. Move on to item six, which is chair board staff announcements, comments, and reports. Are there any staff reports?

No.

It was easy. Are there any commission comments? Chair Silva.

Thank you, Chair Kelly. I just want to comment as I do every meeting about how wonderful the minutes are. Thank you, Yanni. I was reading through them and the recording of our discussion about the two-story house being built to a single-story house and the issues involving the loss of privacy on the single-story house reads like a primer of our policy on lack of privacy, lack of protections for privacy in those instances. These minutes, as good as they are, often do provide that service. So I just want to thank you. I realize AI is a major part of this. God bless AI. Thank you.

Are there any other Commission comments, Commissioner Zeiss? Okay. Then I would just, two brief comments. One is to remind the commissioners, not this meeting, but next meeting will be Commissioner Hernandez's final meeting with us. And so we will allow an opportunity for her to speak there. But whether it's that meeting or a subsequent meeting where Janet leaves us, we are going to be two commissioners down for a while until that's appointed. And so staff will be asking commissioners to confirm attendance in advance of the meetings. It's just important that we're optimistic about our ability to attend. There are some votes and staff will let us know when they're happening where an affirmative majority of the commission is required. And so five member meetings can be very challenging. So we'll just want to be cognizant of that. And then the other item I wanted to mention is I heard some concerns about the bylaws being raised in a couple of different areas. I'll work with the vice chair and try to get staff to bring us something in September to clean some of that up. And we'll give notice about those changes in advance so that there can be a discussion on what folks would like to see. And then also a subsequent meeting where those can be voted on. Are there any other commissioner comments?

I know that we're going to adjourn in memorandum of Mark, but I just do want to say personally that he had so much expertise of being multiple committee into understanding the builders and people aspects of how to try to get projects done it it's an immeasurable experience that we're going to be lacking on this board and i and now that when somebody's gone you always kind of reflect of that experience and what he brought to this commission was so i know you're going to be close emily's listing he amazing person for this commission.

Thank you for that. I am going to go ahead and finish item six. Item seven will be an opportunity for public comments on the adjournment itself before we adjourn. So were there any members of the public wishing to provide comments on the staff report announcements or comments made by commissioners so far?

No raised hands.

Being none in the room, I'm going to go ahead and close public comment on item number six, which brings us to item number seven, which is tonight we will be adjourning subsequently in honor of our former chair, Mark Crawford, who passed away last month. I'm going to allow commissioners to have the opportunity to share remarks and then members of the public if they so desire. I will just start out by saying that, you know, as... Commissioner Nielsen just said, Mark had a tremendous depth of knowledge from a number of standpoints. It's hard to I learned a lot from Mark and at the time when Mark joined the commission, I had already been on it for about eight years and had known him beforehand. But just his passion for the community, he really cared about his community greatly. Not just projects he was working on, not just things that he had, you know, not just in his neighborhood, but the community as a whole. And one of the things that I always really appreciated about Mark was his belief in public process and how important it is for the public's voice to be heard. and really lifting up, making sure we were listening to what concerns neighbors had and and how projects would actually impact the people living there, which sometimes I think it's lost in zoning and all the specifics. But the other thing was, is he did bring a lot of knowledge and experience as to what the folks trying to build the things we're going through. And we set a lot of, a lot of goals Mark would remind us, but unless someone can build it, unless we make that appropriate, Mark was very fond of reminding us that folks can build it here. They can go somewhere else to build it and we need to make the process accessible to everyone. And so Mark,

will be greatly missed um and um are there any other commissioners wishing to make a comment i was going to just add on has already been said but mark was a tremendous wealth of knowledge um I called him on other issues sometimes and asked questions and it may be some, not even a funny, maybe something else. And I was just asking questions and we would talk. And one of my last conversations with them was the combating commission. Would you have my support as being the chair again, because you have so much knowledge and you have so much leadership in you. We didn't always agree, but he was definitely somebody that she called him. He was there. And I learned that in the long run. And I would love to have his records. I'm sure his records at home, I bet it's meticulous of things that he's been and boards and stuff. And I'm the type of guy, I like to get those information. I bet his records are set. And I would just look at him and gather that knowledge he has so that we don't lose it.

Thank you. Oh, I don't think I've served with Marcus as long as some of the others on the commission, but I think, uh, right after I was appointed meeting, I had a really great phone call and it was just immediately evident to me is driven by commitment to community, just having been engaged in community. And I think it was said respect for a public process and having, um, making sure everyone had a voice that was just so integral to who Mark was and what he advocated for. So yeah, regardless of on a particular issue, you were sort of, uh, cheering along with him or against him. I think he'd be really happy that you were here at all, you know? And so I, I just, I just saw that. And, and, you know, I don't know that that was always appreciated by folks, but, but just how much he genuinely wanted to facilitate, um, what we're all here to do, which is, um, you know, make public decisions and make the public a part of that.

When I... When I think of Mark, I think of how he uses tremendous knowledge into so many accomplishments. I told him one time that every time I drive down Castor Valley Boulevard, I think, thank you, Mark. Good job. Well done, Mark. Well done, Castor Valley Mac, that he led. Castor Valley is a nice place and no small part to his many contributions.

You're in the Planning Commission.

You read the minutes. You can see his hand all over them. You see his huge impact on moving forward the public agenda. And one thing I always liked about Mark, oftentimes if there was a proposal that didn't get passed or people had a proposal, he would say, you have my email, you have my phone number. Get in touch and let's see if we can help you out. I mean, that was remarkable. For the whole time, for the 10, 12 years that I knew Mark before I came on the commission, he and I were bitter rivals, very unpleasant rivals. He was a developer. I live in anti-development Fairview. He planned to develop in Fairview. We opposed it mightily. It didn't get built. But after my appointment, which he lobbied vigorously against, he said, let's talk. We did. Thanks to him, we established common ground. We became good friends. And I must say, we discovered that in many subjects were ideological soulmates. I hear many times, many times when, um, uh, our loss of Marcus discussed that the common has always made, he left big shoes to fill. He sure did.

Commissioner Hernandez. Do you have anything you'd like to say?

Yeah, I do. Thank you, Chair. During my three years of serving as a planning commissioner, I came to know Chair Crawford as someone who genuinely cared about his community and viewed public service as both an honor and social responsibility. When I first joined the Planning Commission, he made me feel welcomed. Unlike many others, he called me to, again, welcome me to the board and answer any of my questions. And I will always remember that during the winter months when I often struggled with cold or the seasonal cough, he would kindly share a cough drop with me, which was just a small gesture of his generosity and kindness. I will always remember this. In the last meeting, he gave me more than enough fare tickets to the Alameda County Fair for my entire family, which they deeply enjoyed. And again, this is just another example of his kindness and generous gesture, which I will always appreciate. Again, I will always be grateful to the opportunity to serve alongside with Chair Crawford for his unwavering dedication to Alameda County.

Thank you, Commissioner Hernan. Are there any members of the public, either present or online, who would like to provide any remarks about Mark? Please do so.

Ray Turnbull, Sonola, California. I'm one of the ones who least knew Mark. And I, as you, as you, I talked to you in public comments, I mentioned that my first interaction with Mark was your, um, item 10 a on September 15th. And I learned more about Mark, um, from, from Dan who, um, explained to me that this horse thing went faster because he pushed it through, and then thankfully TNP went fast and pushed it through, and hopefully we'll see a little more speed. However, I was looking through my notes, which are this excerpt, and I made a point nearly a year ago to put green highlight over everything that Mark said. And he knew how to run a meeting.

He knew how to hear the public.

He knew how to build consensus and get you guys to work together. Mr. Silva, thank you so much for that comment that you just made. I think that speaks tremendously for our fallen leader that he was able to find common ground with you given his mission and your mission and then finding a way forward. It solidifies why I feel disappointed that I didn't get to have more of Mr. Crawford in my life. I'd like to write about Mr. Crawford and inform Sunol when the time comes. I understand that maybe his family isn't quite ready for that, but perhaps when his family's ready, maybe there might be a bigger discussion about remembering him because at the same time, we also lost County supervisor who meant a lot to me named Scott Haggerty. And so having just hit my 65th birthday and knowing that both of these gentlemen were young men, and I still think of myself as a young man, these things hit you and you start to be introspective. And thank you to this board for giving this time to remember this man that I didn't get a chance to know very well. He questioned the status quo. He was controversial. But that's what you need, especially if you're going to represent the public in the seventh largest county in California. So thank you all for your comments. Your loss of this leader is obviously more impactful than my personal loss, but I feel you, and here's to Mark Crawford and his journey in the next life.

Thank you. Are there any other members of the public? Please come forward.

Thank you. I'll be brief. This is your guys' memorial, and I don't want to rein in on it, but You know, my love and respect of Mark compels me to at least say a few words. Mark was a man that suffered no fools. And I know because I started my relationship similar to Mr. Silva's, and I was one of those fools. And I called for his removal from the MAC, and I fought him publicly. And it didn't take long. And for some reason, he forgave me and encouraged me to stay civically involved, encouraged me to join the MAC many, many years later. It was always a wealth of knowledge. If there was a question as it related to county policy, whether it was planning or public works or all the different divisions, just an absolute wealth of knowledge. Our friendship actually developed where he nominated me, which I accepted as an honorary deputy sheriff association. And I go, what is that all about other than writing a couple of checks a year? And then I just thought if it's good enough for Mark, it's good enough for me. So, so he attended the induct, inductee, uh, meeting with me. And I appreciated that. Um, you folks have huge shoes to fill. Everybody's has, has been saying that. And, and, um, I hope that I am motivated by Mark's example, as I hope you are all motivated. Nobody came to a meeting better prepared than he, um, Nobody worked as tirelessly as he did behind the scenes. I forget which one of you mentioned that he might deny an application and then immediately say, I think there's a road. We're not going to handle it tonight, but I'm open and I'm available. And his fingerprints are all over good applications in Castro Valley that wouldn't have happened without his personal intervention and assistance. And Castro Valley is also devoid of some horrible applications because of his involvement. And so I hope that all of us that are in the public arena can have his work ethic where we come as prepared as he came. And again, when I say he suffered, no fools. If there was somebody trying to get something over on the county, if it wasn't in the public's best interest, they were going to hear from it very forcefully. If there was a policy, an MTC or an ABAG or a state of California housing policy that didn't quite fit Alameda County, he didn't sit there quietly and nod his head. And he spoke up about that. So in closing, I see Mark's name tag there. Not that it's my job to make a recommendation, but... I would either like to see that somewhere tacked up on a wall in this room, or if you wanted to return it to his family, I think perhaps either Commissioner Silva or myself would be happy to do so. So thank you.

Thank you for that. Are there any other members of the public online wishing to make a comment?

Raise hands online.

Great. With that, I'm going to go ahead and close public comment, although I will say I do think that returning his record to his family basing the small things that are meaningful in times like this. I just, you know, we're going to end, but I just wanted to reflect on what Dale said about how one thing I really appreciated about Mark is you could be arguing with Mark, especially if it wasn't on the dais, and end up in the exact same place for very different reasons. It just, his willingness to listen. And, and Mark could change my mind too, which is, it's not the hardest thing to do, but, but, but, you know, the patience that you have to have on some of these things, because a lot of what we do deal with is not black and white. There's a lot of, of, of trade-offs and tensions. And Mark was really good at seeing both sides or sometimes the third side that wasn't there. Cause it's, cause it's not always one or the other. Oftentimes the, the the answer forward is in the middle and he will be missed and we will continue to try to live up to that Legacy but with that unless there's any other commissioner comments I I believe we can go ahead and adjourn the meeting in marks Everyone, we stand.