City Council - Regular Meeting

miss that, go off the road, I don't see how they could safely get back on the road. So I know you've got your proposed budget for this year for roads, but I would really encourage the city to think of their community and maybe add this to it this year, go through, put on the major roads. I'm not talking about the little roads, but the major roads, your Portola, Tascadero Avenues, uh, San Lucia like that, uh, and add these white lines to the side of the road. They are vitally important for people who don't drive as much as they used to at night. Also, there are places where the, where the, um, dirt has come in and covered the white lines. I think that's something that could be done on a regular maintenance going through and cleaning those, uh, lines off so the public can see them. So that's my major concern for that is just public safety for driving for seniors and new drivers that can't quite navigate those multicolored headlights that we have out on our road. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Good evening, Council, City Staff, Jeff Oslin. Hope everybody had a great Memorial Day. I personally want to thank Jim Lewis and his family for putting the flags up as he has taken over doing that from Go ahead, Mayor.

No, I just want to make, please don't leave the chamber. I'm going to comment to you something. So please don't leave the chamber. Go ahead. I'm sorry, Mr. Sure.

Again, I want to thank Jim Lewis and his family for doing the flags that used to be done by Ron Allen. And it was great that we're still doing that on a personal note. On a couple other things, last meeting, we approved the Del Rio study for the intersections and things of that nature. And just to have a crazy question, because it was mentioned by the director that the possible competitive bid was within range of what we approved Wallace Group their money for. And my real concern is why wouldn't Wallace be extremely cheaper? They have all the records. They've done all the traffic studies. They have everything. They don't have to reinvent the wheel. So I'm just curious why they're not Fifty thousand dollars less than what somebody else would bid on. So that's that. On the other one is I mentioned about a supermarket on the north side of town that's fairly new. I brought it up several times. I'm bringing it up again. I would like to personally know if anybody has made contact with the landlord to enforce our code, which is 7 a.m. deliveries, not 6, not 5 a.m. My understanding is no contact has been made. I'd like to know if that's happened or not. It's still occurring. Home Depot stopped right away, right after that meeting. Trucks aren't idling. They're not offloading till 7. It's amazing. So as one that's going to live by Barrel Creek, if that ever comes to fruition, I want to know what good it is if we have codes that we're not enforcing. No different than like an Airbnb having a noise complaint at 1 in the morning and we choose not to do anything about it or we say it's a civil matter. I think that is incorrect, and we need to fix that. Otherwise, maybe contractors should start doing their contracting things all over the neighborhoods at 4 a.m.? What's the difference? Thank you.

Okay, anybody else wishing to speak at community forum? Okay, seeing no one, I'm going to ask Mr. Hayes or Deputy Public Works Director if you could get together with the gentleman and maybe identify some other specific roads he's referring to and explain perhaps. There may be a reason why there isn't a white line everywhere because what I've learned over the years is our public works folks have a lot of expertise and You know, there are sometimes very good answers as to why, you know, we don't have crosswalks everywhere and why this, that, and the other things. So sometimes there's a very good answer. And if you could get together with him and get his contact information, that would be great. And Mr. Dunsmore, if you could get together with Mr. Oslin and answer his particular question regarding the premature deliveries at the new supermarket.

Yes. And if I can just add to that a little bit, I think we go through a very similar scenario with every new large business that opens in the city. With Home Depot, I think we spent several years trying to wrangle in their deliveries. And we're starting that process now with Valley Fresh and the Del Rio Marketplace. And I'll be meeting with them this week. I just haven't done that yet. And I spoke with Jeff Austin at length about this just last week.

Okay, thank you very much. Okay, we will move on now to our next agenda item, which is item G1, a management report regarding our 2045 Atascadero General Plan Environmental Impact Report. And I believe I'm going to turn this over to Mr. Dunsmore.

Thank you, counsel, and good evening. And it looks like it's a really popular item tonight. But I assure you, it's a very interesting discussion, and it's a necessary part of any significant policy update. We have to comply with CEQA, California Environmental Quality Act. This particular undertaking, developing this environmental impact report draft, has been a very substantial undertaking. We've had a lot of help from our legal team. Dave's team here has done a tremendous effort putting together comments with this, and SWCA has been the consultant leading the effort on drafting this document as a sub-consultant to MIG. Where's the – oh, I have my little thing. Here we go. All right. I'm going to give some background about the basics of CEQA. I'll talk about what this EIR does and what the next steps are. The EIR draft is out now. We have copies out available to the public at the public library, one at our counter, one on the website. It's definitely out there. What I like to show you often, you've seen this little map before. It's our process map. We're getting so close to the end. We're almost there. We published the general plan itself. We published the general plan map. And we've done all this work that's given us the ability, bing, there goes that arrow, to be able to develop this draft program EIR, which will result in a final EIR. And essentially tonight, the intent of tonight is to be able to gather comments from the public, gather comments from the council. And those comments can keep coming in all the way up until next Thursday, June 4th. And people can comment on either the adequacy of what we've covered, they can address typo errors in this document. It's a significant document. Just the document itself is roughly 900 pages. Then there's the appendices. There's a lot that goes into this, many consultants working together. But essentially, the reason we have to do all this, we have to demonstrate that we've analyzed impacts on the environment. we have to demonstrate disclosing that to the public. So what this process really is is disclosure. It's about telling people what the potential things are that could happen. Again, I mentioned just a moment ago, I'll mention it again, public comment ends June 4th, that'll complete 45 days of it being out there for public review. What's basically this framework of what this EIR does, it identifies three levels of different potential impacts. The screen's doing some funny things tonight, isn't it, Abby? Oh, she's got some wires there. She's plugging in there. We'll fix that. That's okay. But anyway, there's what's called class one, class two, and class three impacts. Class one, essentially, you deem not to be significant. Class two may be significant, but you can put in place mitigation or conditions that can reduce that level of significance. Then there's class three. I'm doing it the other way around, aren't I? Because I didn't have the screen. Let me just start over again. Class one is significant and unavoidable. No matter how much you mitigate that, you're going to have a potential impact. Class two can be significant, but you can mitigate yourself out of it. You can put in conditions that alleviate that. And then class three is a less than significant. I needed that guide on the screen to show me. So also a basic golden rule of CEQA is that impacts, you need to try and mitigate them to the greatest extent feasible. It means you have to put in place mitigation that your consultants, your background analysis demonstrates is the best you can do. Is the council screen going black too as well? Okay, so it's not just me. All right, so I apologize for my little pause there. In this case, we worked not only with the applicant team to identify mitigation and response to the city goals and meet state requirements, but we've also looked at this in the aspect of the development of our community. We don't want the process here to be an undue burden. The whole idea of this new general plan and this new zoning that we're adopting in accompanying with this general plan is to make development easier to do in the community, more logical and in the right places that reduce the environmental impacts without having to go through significant other processes. Now there's certain things we still have to do, and there's certain declarations we have to make with this EIR, i'm going to go over some of those things but even no matter how hard we try there's some impacts that remain significant even with mitigation because we cross certain state thresholds and there's certain best management practices from state agencies i will tell you um that this general plan a general plan 2045 is far more environmentally friendly than our existing general plan We make great strides in reducing vehicle miles traveled, BMT, because we're adding more mixed use and adding more residential close to commercial and adding more jobs-based land uses in our community. And with that comes reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and reductions in air quality impacts. However, in those particular areas, we still cross these thresholds And we still have to identify that these are class one impacts, which are called significant, not avoidable. No matter how much we mitigate, we're not gonna get there unless we do nothing. And if we do nothing, we will not survive as a community. And I will also understate this by saying we made some pretty big assumptions and we essentially overestimated our population in our city. we're probably not gonna grow quite to the extent that we estimate in this 2045 general plan. And we do that so that we cover our bases and we're very conservative with our numerical estimates and we have in place plans that can get us there. Now I'm gonna treat this a little bit like a podcast and maybe let's talk to Kelly and ask her what she thinks about geology. What do you think about geology and the class two impacts there, Kelly?

I love geology. We have a lot of different soils types in the city of Atascadero, it's very unique. But our impact mostly relates to paleontological resources. And so that is a required question that we have to ask ourselves during the CEQA process. And there was a mitigation measure that was identified to reduce our impacts. to paleontological resources. And so that was to require a study of people that are proposing to do certain levels of development within areas that have soils types identified to potentially have paleontological resources. So this is a map of those soils areas within the city. You can see that they follow some of our alluvial areas along creeks and some of our low-lying areas. This study is a study that can be defined in certain ways to really hone in on those activities that need to be mitigated. So we can go through and work more with a consultant to say is there a certain depth that those resources might be at, and if you're excavating less than that depth, you probably don't require a study. So this does give us some leeway to truly hone in on what those impacts are that need to be mitigated and what development potential is out there that does not need to be under this area of study because there is not going to be a potential impact to those resources. Another area that was identified to have a potential impact was to our utilities and specifically to our wastewater collection system and treatment facility. So I think you're all aware that our main treatment facility is proposed to go through some major upgrades in order to handle additional future capacity. But we do also have a wastewater collection system, the network of pipes and all those things under the street that also will need some work as time moves forward. We don't believe we're at that spot yet with any particular area but we do want to be cognizant of some of those limitations as we move forward. And so there was a mitigation measure identified that would allow us to look at each individual project and ensure that we have adequate capacity prior to approving a project. Wait for the screen to come back up so you guys don't miss anything fun. So this slide is air quality and this is our class one impact. So even with identified mitigation measures, we are still above certain state thresholds. And again, that's okay because we're making a finding that that is okay, that we have identified and implemented all feasible mitigation measures and that we understand that projects will not be able to go to the nth degree for mitigation or that we're not going to inhibit certain growth in the city in order to meet some of those thresholds just by the nature of how our region and our city operates. So you can see there's a lot of air quality greenhouse gas emissions and transportation level impacts that all feed into greenhouse gas emission impacts and impacts to vehicle miles traveled, which is VMT. So greenhouse gas emissions comes from things like travel and cars. And VMT vehicle miles traveled from a statewide perspective looks to limit the distance between where people live and where people work so that the miles spent in a single use vehicle are limited to the greatest extent possible in order to then have better impacts on greenhouse gas emissions. So let me put my glasses on to read the little screen. Um, so for greenhouse gas emission impact, number one, there were three identified mitigation measures that could be incorporated, um, in order to reduce impacts, just not below the given threshold. Um, that is updating the city's climate action plan and including some measures, um, in there that talk about, um, the things that we already do a lot of in terms of our maintaining our native urban tree canopy and things of that nature. incorporating new development standards to promote the use of public transit a lot of that is also required by building code. And some of our multifamily objective design standards that we recently adopted do require some connections to the sidewalk and create walkable environment so we're already doing a lot of those things as well. The next is to incorporate a general plan policy to participate in slow cogs. regional transportation plan and sustainable community strategy, which is something that the city does anyways, but it's stated out loud in this document as a guiding framework to continue those efforts. So in terms of our class one impact, there are thresholds that are specifically set by the state for greenhouse gas emissions and VMT. And regardless of what we do in a city of 26.2 square miles, 26.1, there is not much that we can do to really get below that 15% VMT reduction that the state is looking for. We have a semi-rural and suburban community. We are in a region where people travel for work and we have major job centers. Having said that, this particular general plan does do better than our existing general plan. We focus heavily on infill development, which will help reduce some of those vehicle miles traveled and help support future public transit as we have sort of critical mass of population adjacent to our major corridors. And we have a lot of policies focused on improving our jobs housing ratio. So creating those areas that could be more job-centric and industry-centric areas. Again, as Phil mentioned, our population estimates are a little bit more forgiving than some of the slow cog modeling and state modeling. And that, again, allows us flexibility in analyzing future projects so that we can streamline as much as possible when projects that support our city goals come before us. Next steps, we're at our draft environmental impact report, done, written, you can come see it anytime. Draft fiscal analysis, which is informs the general plan, but is slightly separate. We'll come to you in your June meeting this year. then we're at our grand finale of plan adoption in the fall of this year after we've responded to all of the environmental impact report comments and have made any final edits to the general plan so we're here it's been a journey and we're at the finish line and i believe that concludes our presentation um that's a qr code to our website up there where you can continue to make comment you can also review our environmental document on that website and on the city's website And you can come view physical copies at City Hall and the Atascadero Library if you so need to. And that concludes our presentation. We are available if you have any questions. All right.

Thank you very much. And I got to say, I thank you also for the hour I spent this morning with you. I did peruse, went through all thousand or so pages of this. I can't say I read them all. Probably read a couple hundred of them. But and to be honest, quite frank, it's very confusing. You know, there's a lot of repetition and redundancy, as they might say. things are mentioned over and over again in different contexts. And I realize that's all part of what's required in the way an AIR is done. It's a shame that the state requires them to be put together in such a long winded fashion. But I thank you for answering my question. So I will not have any specific questions this evening. I might have a few more comments. So I'm gonna turn over my colleagues, but I wanna note, as I understand the process here, PB John Gerstle, Any comments and or questions that Council asked will go into as part of the record regarding. PB John Gerstle, Regarding the record as far as this this thing here this evening, is that correct.

Yes, we do want to do want to take comments yeah. I mean so, but I mean the comments that we make Council will be documented as part of the process, they will be documented right so questions not necessarily but any comments that you have for modifications or clarifications.

Okay, I just want to make sure my colleagues are aware of that and hopefully you also had a chance to ask some questions ahead of time, but i'm going to begin on my left with Councilmember peak with questions for staff.

yeah I have a question regards to. it's page 3248. on the staff report in regards to GHG slash MM 1.2. New development projects located along existing or planned public transit routes that require features that promote the use of public transport transit. We have one bus that goes through town, and I don't know if I've ever seen any other planned transit routes. So is this just filler words for... We don't have any planned, extra planned public transit routes, do we?

We don't have any extra planned at the moment. Again, this is a 20, 25-year document. And so I know there are always talks with our public transit agencies to increase ridership and increase their reach, but none at the time.

So we're basically just, this would be just talking about an impact report. If it doesn't exist yet, if anybody wants to build along a corridor that's not yet planned transit, but it becomes planned transit and someone all of a sudden has property that they're wanting to develop on and their street in front of their house becomes, or in the front of their property becomes a planned public transit route, then their plans have to change. So beyond zoning that like the frontage, the sidewalk, everything about it would have to be different or the vague stuff like this in the long report are very, it's just kind of just seems like it's just opening, just leaving the can open to like,

Yeah, and a lot of these general plan policies are sort of vague and broad for the reason that things change over time. A lot of transit supportive development includes higher density. It includes sidewalks and walkways that connect to the sidewalk. Generally, our entire frontage is available to the city and obviously our transit friends then for certain planned improvements like bus stops. And so we would not necessarily need to widen onto private development. And so a lot of the concepts that help support public transit are already integrated into our higher density multifamily projects.

Okay.

Any other questions? Okay. Mayor Pro Tem Darius.

All right, just one quick question on the, if I can say it right, paleontological resources. On that map you had, there were several, I imagine, I think it was all the yellow spots that was on there. So how were those areas identified? And what is going to determine whether or not additional studies are going to be required?

So in these cases we rely on other professions in this case paleontologists and they identify areas that have soil types that are conducive to prehistory resources fossils left behind. And so, these are a maybe these not saying he is guaranteed that we're going to have paleontology cool resources we're going to find dinosaur bones. it's the fact that we have layers of soil that are conducive to that. So they're asking for, Hey, if there's a significant development project where you're going to excavate a significant area in these zones, you need to go through this, this, you know, check to see if you're going to have paleontological resources. So this is definitely a question. I think we have, we had this question. We really tried to grill down on this with our consultants and say, is this really necessary? It's just, it's this way we can do it. But then we, go back to CEQA and CEQA says you've got to mitigate the best you can. So here we are. So I think it's definitely worthy of a comment from council.

So you said significant development. In some of these areas, the development that I see that's potential is maybe somebody's residence. Maybe that's on a three to five acre size lot. I don't know what size lots are. I think it was on Lomita I saw part of that. So would you know, would, or near Lamitas anyway. So if somebody was, you know, because when you do a house, you have to do a SOILS report. So you're going to dig down, you're going to find stuff. Is that going to require additional studying? And what does the additional studies entail?

We don't actually have the infinite details on that yet. And so it's been a question for us as well. We wanted to have our consultant weigh in on this particular one tonight. They weren't available for that. All right.

Thank you. Before I pass it on to Council Member Funk, you'd mentioned, though, that you were talking about deeper projects. So like if I'm digging a foundation for a single family home, that would not necessarily trigger this. Whereas if I'm digging... You know, a huge retention basin for a commercial structure or something you know there's a difference between two feet deep three feet deep and 12 feet deep right. Because I mean there's a huge there, I think what we're worried about here is the potential for huge costs being imposed on people. A, trying to build a single family residence, but B, also commercial property developers. Where's the outer edge of the limit on these things in terms of what can be imposed on property owner? That, aha, your lot has soil type X. You've got to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars or something to dig it all up and make sure there's not a dinosaur bone there.

yeah and we have similar questions so. In talks with our consultant our technical lead in terms of implementation of this right, so the general plan policy stays a little bit broad and large and in terms of implementation. They do believe that there is a certain depth or a certain sort of size project that would not necessarily trigger an additional study. A lot of our single family residences do not go that deep with their foundations. There's recommendations of soils reports in terms of how much sort of over excavation you need to do. And sometimes it's not significant and so really staffs goal as well, is to limit these types of studies, you know really only when they are necessary and there could be a potential significant impact.

Thank you, because I think that's really the concern is it becomes very. Common nowadays require you know with this study into that study and they all cost money and they all take time. And they can kill projects. They can just flat out kill them because they go, I can't afford to do that. I'm not going to do the project. So that's our concern. So I'm glad to hear you state it in that fashion that we're trying to minimize them. Go ahead.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. You kind of reminded me of something. I have a follow-up question on that. When you purchase the home or a blank piece of property or whatnot, there's sometimes things that are part of that property that needs to be disclosed. The flood zone goes to the middle of the property, things like that. Is this kind of information, how will this get to the purchaser? before they get to the point, say, I want to buy this property, I'm going to plan to develop it this way, they get so far and they get into it, and then these things come up, and as the mayor said, that it could potentially kill the project, but now they're knee-deep into it. So how are people going to be forewarned that there could be a potential of additional studies required?

What we typically do with this kind of a map, with this mitigation, it has to ultimately get implemented into our zoning policies. So this map would have to get refined and the mitigation measure would have to get adopted into a zoning policy that adopts just like a flood zone map, just like these other sort of development boundaries that you have, you have to implement them into your city codes so that when someone looks at a property and says, hey, what are my development restrictions? These things come up. Now, as I'm looking at this mitigation measure language too, it does have some flexibility in it. And it does talk about, only be necessary in areas that haven't been previously excavated, you know, and we can also have, we also need to get some more investigation on what the depth is. So for an example, like if I'm going to be developing something on the dove Creek site or Del Rio marketplace site, these areas have been heavily graded and leveled and filled and modified. They're all historically done already. So those wouldn't be subject to that. Now, someone building a brand new site, know three-story house on a steep hillside where it's vacant land certainly that you know they're going to excavate 20 feet down that might be where this study is triggered we don't yet even know what the extent of that study is what it would cost what it takes could be similar to archaeological study which is very inexpensive in most cases unless they require follow-up monitoring um So these are, yeah, this is definitely one that has a lasting implication that needs to be implemented through zoning needs to be identified and could potentially be one of these things that we have to follow up on. Now, looking at the map, a lot of those areas, um, are previously developed or they're not the prime development areas along the corridor of El Camino and 41 and in the triangle where we're increasing density and the west side is primarily developed. It's kind of interesting locations where that is. Looks like it's mostly the northeastern quadrant and some on the southeastern quadrant there. It's all close to the river, which is interesting. And again, it's based on a soil type is what they...

Recorded soil types based on the developments that's happened in the past. Thank you.

Council Member Funk.

Yes, I too have questions about these paleontological resources. And for the sake of simplicity, is it okay if I oversimplify that and just, we're talking about dinosaur bones?

Prehistoric resources, which include dinosaurs, yes.

Or could include very small fossils of ancient creatures of other types.

Yes.

Okay. So is it reasonable to assume that any place that human beings have decided to live on the planet, other beings have previously decided to live on the planet at some point and might have left bones or material?

That's called archaeology, which is historic, not prehistoric. Yes.

Right. Okay. But the critters have lived a lot of places that we've decided are useful for us too. Have there ever been any significant dinosaur bone finds in the city of Atascadero to your knowledge?

I have not visited the Atascadero Natural History Museum where they have all the dinosaur bones. I haven't been able to find it yet. So no, I'm not aware of any significant paleontological resources found in our community whatsoever. I'd be really curious if anybody is aware of that. I'm not aware of myself, and I've lived here a very long time.

If we looked at these identified maps, if you looked at this statewide, are these kinds of soil strata and things that they're identifying as potential places for dinosaur bones, is this pretty widespread? Or are we somehow particularly distinctively having special spaces that might be valuable?

It's very widespread, and you'll see this throughout the entire county. And in fact, there's areas where you can see prehistoric resources on the surface. For example, if you go out to the Lopez Lake area, the back of Lopez Lake, where the river feeds into Lopez Lake, you'll see fossils all over the surface out there. And they consider those paleontological resources, and they're shell fossils inside rocks, and there's loads of them. He used to go there as kids and collect them. So that would be considered a paleontological resource. And so they're all over this county because we have these similar soil types and the similar geology in many areas. And basically what it is it's old seafloor that's condensed and packed down and it's a sandstone kind of the really, really dense sandstone it's packed down. that's where you see these fossil layers and that's where they've determined that these are in these areas so.

Okay. I have nothing against dinosaur bones or the fund of looking for fossils and all that, but I'm having real heartburn over the way this thing operates. If I understand it, am I correct in understanding that this is something that has been in state law for about 50 years? Yes. I think it's like 1976 that it was adopted into CEQA?

Yes, it was originally adopted into CEQA as one of the sections to be aware of and to comment on and to evaluate, yes.

And then in the course of time since we've had this requirement, something that might have been useful to say, let's make sure that nobody paves over the La Brea Tar Pits. or something that's really valuable, now you have areas all over the state that are being identified as potential resources. Is it also fair to assume that the technology has gotten better over time and is probably more able to find more little fossils and resources that could then have to be carefully extracted according to the, what does it say in here, the standards of the American Paleontological Society or whatever? Is it assumed that we're able to find more of them now than maybe we were, you know, in 1976?

Absolutely. Technology is enhanced substantially, and I think that so have geological reports and us doing soil reports, and we build foundations based on soil types in a much better way. We're looking at some information as to whether when paleontological resources were at a sequence. It actually looks like it was a lot more recently. It looks like it was 2018. that the big change was done to add this as a significant factor. So we wouldn't have had this in our last general plan EIR when we did that back in 2002. So that's why we didn't have that mitigation. That's why this is sort of a brand new thing. But maybe there's a different way to look at the mitigation measure and hence the conditions that follow it on properties. And I think this is a valid comment to leave with the EIR, draft EIR, to see how this can be folded in in a way that doesn't create an undue burden for each and every development. I'm not exactly sure tonight how to word that, but that's a good topic. And we are in draft form right now, so...

Yeah, okay. So you're saying it, you know, would it be possible then potentially to scope this in a way that minimizes the number of properties that are susceptible? So, you know, if there's a place or two that really might be amazing, you know, we could allow for that. But that this, you know, the faint potential that you might find a fossil someplace doesn't create the obligation for every single development in these areas to have to make an assessment of how deep they're going to go and how this compares to certain requirements of excavation. Is it sufficient? And then do you have a consultant who specializes in this, who does a report to do that? certify that they have checked this and create an opportunity for anybody who might, you know, any neighbor who might not like the project to then challenge them in the court and the basis of the fact that they didn't do a good enough paleontological report. Are we not setting up that whole scenario and can we minimize it? Yeah, it's... Maybe that was a rhetorical question.

Or was it a statement? Yeah, and so I think understood.

Yeah, okay. So I'll come back to this when we get to discussion because I have a couple of thoughts about that. But, yeah, enough already. Moving on to air quality. I noticed as I was going through Appendix C and some of the other wonderful online resources, that all of the air quality tables seem to be countywide data. Is it true that this is, we don't really have the data to measure air quality impacts specific to Itascanero, and we're just looking at what we might change, at the extent to which after we make our changes, the county as a whole would still exceed thresholds?

So we did pose this question of our consultant team and they haven't been able to reach the technical consultant yet with the answer. I do know in a broader scale that sometimes citywide data is either doesn't have the same level of data integrity that countywide data has. And so in order to meet sort of the CEQA requirements for analysis, they need to use a larger data set. I don't know if that occurred in this specific situation. I do know it occurred in some of our energy modeling that was done because citywide data is not as complete and it wasn't an effective data set to use.

Okay, because I routinely look at Atascadero's air quality using the app EPA or AirNow or whatever. There's an app on my phone that I use. And our air quality consistently is good unless there's a major fire someplace in the area blowing smoke at us. But... If you look at air quality for the Nipomo Mesa in the south part of the county, which is downwind of agricultural activity and downwind of a fair amount of vehicular activity on the Oceano Dunes, that area, which is also part of our county and contributes to countywide numbers, they have bad air quality days all the time and sometimes have among the worst air quality in the country. You'll hear that report. Is everything we do still playing in a data set that includes those areas that have very different air quality characteristics?

We can't answer on this specific situation because we don't have our technical analysts to weigh in. Okay.

It's just worth noting, assuming that that is true at some level from the data that's shown on its face, it does appear that It sounds like we're creating worse impacts from this than maybe we actually are, as you've clarified, that we're actually doing things that make our impact better. And we're doing the things that are within our city's control, but we can't control what's happening with ag land and OHV use in the South County, right?

Yeah, and we will add that the majority of the impact in the air quality section is greenhouse gas. So there's not a lot of other impacts in terms of just the standard pollutants in our air. There was sort of no feasible mitigation there, and there's air quality plans that are countywide, and so that's kind of the data set that they use. I think in the numerous times that Phil and I have seen EIRs come through for multiple projects within the county at large and the city, there's generally not been one where the air quality impact is less than significant. Even projects such as Barrel Creek always have an air quality impact simply because people drive cars. And so it is, while there might be, and we can clarify some of the data sets that were used and why they were used, it might have something to do with the level of threshold being a countywide and the plans being countywide, therefore we need to use countywide data.

it is not uncommon um to have air quality impacts across multiple ranges and sizes of projects yeah okay i mean there's there's a limit to how much is in our control when we do the things our city can do uh responsibly and well um okay do you um to that with regard to the vehicle miles traveled and the impact of the fact that if the community grows there will be more cars and people will drive them. Even if we make it easier for some of them to work here so they drive less, they'll still drive cars. Do you know what mix of gas and electric vehicles um the greenhouse gas numbers assume as we're modeling this does does that trend over time um or do we assume that it's a current mix of vehicles and nobody we won't ever get any improvement in the number of electric cars people might drive i i do believe if i remember correctly from our consultant team that they do build in a factor of increasing electric vehicles Okay, because that certainly will help over time and those incentive policies are largely out of our pay grade. Okay, and then last on the wastewater capacity, just making sure that what we're dealing with here is essentially the sewer pipes and the lift stations, right? So that would be specific to capacity for, an individual property. If they want to get building permits for the property, the sewer pipe has got to be big enough and the lift stations have to be big enough to accept the flow that would be generated by the project being envisioned, right?

Correct. And that's all very flow specific and it's very type of development specific. And we do have plans over the next 20 years. I think I'm looking at Ryan to start upgrading and replacing some of those systems. And depending on size of development, development does some of those pieces as well. So that's why it's kind of a check-in on each project basis because things are anticipated to change and be repaired over time.

Okay. And that makes a lot of sense. It is a requirement that we can't really get around. You've got to be able to handle that aspect of capacity. Okay. That'll do me for questions for now.

Thank you. I think we'll go out to public comment, and then we'll come back to see if council members make any comments that they wish to make about this process.

Good evening, Council. Jeff Oz on one comment. Will this EIR also include the possibility of reclaimed water being piped from our sewage plant to other areas?

John Potter, Seeing no other public comment will close public comment, can you address I mean it's interesting whether that sort of thing is part of the general plan or not, I don't know if it was assessed in the ir at all regarding the wastewater comments.

John Potter, it's not currently a discussion in the general plan or in the future zoning or in the ir at this time. John Potter, I know it's it's a discussion that a lot of cities have and our city has had you know it's potential to. utilize that water for refilling a task at our lake, for example, which is a wonderful idea, but it's not something that's currently in one of the draft policies of the new general plan. But it doesn't have to be either, and it can be evaluated separately.

And it will be maybe part of the discussion as we move through the wastewater treatment plant discussion and process. Okay, I'm going to bring it back for council member comments. I'll start again on my left, I guess, with council member Peek.

Is it typical for an analyst or someone who's... helping us with the EIR not to show up to one of these meetings? It was it is this like a rare occasion that they're just not here or nobody could come from their company?

They typically always show up to these particular this is our only big public hearing on the EIR, we would strongly encourage our environmental consultant to be here. And they were not available.

Do they owe us a participation in this that we're not getting?

They, uh, right now they're out of budget. So they were not able to attend, unfortunately. And we did invite them. We had hoped that we would get an online presence of our consultant. And, um, that's a conversation we're having.

This seems like a few questions could have been easily answered by. Absolutely.

Well, I understand. I mean, we may also have, you know, contractual issues in terms of funding being utilized or time being utilized for corrections and those sort of things. So that may warrant, you know, further discussion on your part and discussion with council, et cetera. But we're not going to solve that here, but it's a very good question. So any comments, any other comments you want to convey? Okay. Mayor Pertenderas. Okay. Council Member Funk, and then I'll have some closing comments on it.

Sure. A couple of things. First of all, you know, something that's not in this plan directly, but is very consistent with the policies that are laid out here is what for me is my blue sky dream for a Tascadero that's having a, us being the, when the technology gets ripe, us being the demo case for a self-driving electric trolley that runs up and down El Camino Real from one end of the city to the other and then bops out to the community center and printery and on one side and bops out to the lake park and zoo on the other to get cover all of our major commercial areas connected in town and make it a whole lot of imagine three o'clock in the afternoon if you know half the high school kids and a third of the junior high jump on the trolley to go to someplace closer to home or someplace you know where mom and dad work or after school programs or whatever and There's just all kinds of things can be facilitated with fewer trips and reduced vehicle miles travels if we had some kind of resource like that, which is very different than your standard, you know, can we get another route of another vehicle? run of the number nine bus going through town sort of thing. This would be a whole different thing. So I think in the course of the 20 years that are envisioned in this plan, Hopefully, that day will come that we could pursue something that would, if the technology actually works, that would really be cool for this community and would allow us to be a special and connected community and be environmentally good as well. So I just want to put it out there that there are some options that we can have that will continue to be good. The technology is not ready for us to make that part of a plan yet, but that day may come. So that would be my hope. And then the other thing that I wanted to come and talk about a little bit more is the dinosaur bone thing. This just drives me nuts. Because you can see where a well-intentioned requirement. that is placed to protect some very special resources has become something that has a pretty broad spread and requires all kinds of projects to have to stop and hire a consultant and do a report and get the special stuff and potentially create a project-killing event. So there's risk that you might find something and have to do... You might find a few fossils and then have to do a really complex scientific process that just totally screws up the kinds of projects that we want people to be bringing to our community to help us move forward together. So I would hope that we could... um find explore the possibilities that staff would look at you know how can we do less of this make it much more limited so that fewer people have to do this report um and then i'll come back in individual determination about You know, fussing at the state level about having to do this in the first place, because this is how we layer on costs and make it difficult to build stuff is, you know, lots of really well-attentioned things that achieve secondary goals. And it just layers on like, you know, an 18-layer cake. you know, of costs and it makes things too much. So that's my comment on that. And we'll come back, I'll come back to the legislative angle in the individual determination.

OK, thank you. Yeah, I would follow on that because, you know, whether it's paleontological resources or several other different things in general, you know, the state is totally contradictory. You know, they want us to allow for zone for housing. They want us to encourage the building of housing. And then they just put up impediment after impediment in terms of increased cost for doing housing and increased risk. for doing housing so that somebody embarks on something and then they find, you know, some dinosaur bones or this or that or something else. And the state just constantly, you know, writes laws that imposes costs and makes it more difficult to build anything, you know, because they say they want to encourage housing to be built, but their actions say otherwise. And I agree with Council Member Funk that we would ask staff to do what they can to minimize the impact of this on projects in terms of either limiting the criteria in which it would apply, that sort of thing, because all of these things do just add costs. I would also address, like, you know, there's multiple mentions in here about our high priority towards the tree ordinance. And, you know, we live in a community that I would almost guarantee you has, you know, thousands upon thousands upon thousands more trees than it did 50 or 100 years ago when this was established as an agricultural project. based community. And yet we act like, oh my God, somebody is going to build a house and they have to cut down a couple of trees that it's the end of the world. And I think that is based on very faulty reasoning. I look at my own property, which had zero trees on it when we built and now has, you know, probably a couple of hundred trees and, and probably several score of oak trees that would fall under the ordinance if we were a commercial property. And it's just, there is so much overkill in this entire EIR and CEQA process that runs at cross purposes to the state's stated goals of encouraging housing. And we in Atascadero also want to encourage commercial development so that we have a better balanced city. One of the things that is a big problem in Atascadero is that jobs housing balance that staff referred to. We have a very low number of jobs compared to the amount of housing. We want to encourage jobs for a whole bunch of reasons, including revenue, but also so that our residents don't have to get in a car and drive to work in the morning over the hill. And if anybody actually truly cared about the environment, they would understand the importance of that, of having people stay in their community to work and then to shop and, you know, get services, etc. But every time you turn around in this process, they just try to make it more difficult to build by extraneous requirements and, you know, repetitive requirements. And so it's very frustrating to me. to go through this process. And we spent a lot of money for an EIR that is 100 pages of largely gobbledygook, quite frankly. But it's just part of the process that we're required to go through. And so with that, I want to thank staff for all of the effort they've put into this. And I know that you understand that, you know, council desire in this is to try to make it easier for people to build things because that's what we need to move forward as a community. So those are my comments. And I think that's about it. You guys have what you need from us.

We do. Thank you.

Okay. All right. Thank you. So with that, that was our only major item. We will move on to council announcements and committee report and committee reports. And I'll start on my right with council member Funk.

Okay, I attended a meeting of the Homeless Services Oversight Council last week, and we approved some additional grants that are routine in terms of elements of funding. The way homeless services funding is done is... endlessly complicated with the money coming from multiple state and federal and other programs, each of which has its own requirements and scope and timing and so forth. And this is all trying to be squeezed through a county purchasing process model, which really fits that badly. And we are trying to really work systematically at how you think about overall funding requirements. So the next large set of funding requirements that come up will have geographic minimums as well. And this one also did. But so that that this critical services are available in each part of the county to people who are in those parts of the county, as well as performance based awards that are based to whoever is who's getting the best results that that they get more money than when there's not enough to go around. um but that there are these needs uh in all parts of the county and they're strong and capable providers in all parts of the county so um that that's you know where what each sock's working on i also attended along with a number of staff members and the mayor um the slow roundtable hosted by Economic Development Roundtable, hosted by REACH last week. And that was a very interesting discussion with folks. Nothing truly path-breaking, but I passed a couple of ideas along to staff for things that we might be able to work on.

Okay, thank you. Our poor Tim Derris.

Thank you. Last week, APCD met, Air Pollution Control District. A number of things we went over. They're trying to get a grant. I think they're going to be successful on it. It's about $80,000 to be able to provide low-income families that qualify with a voucher to buy an e-bike for hopefully to cut down on energy costs for them to get around town and to work and whatnot. The vouchers would be up to $2,000, and there's specific e-bikes that would qualify for that. Some of these ones that these kids are riding that go 40, 50 miles an hour. They're not even legal in California, I guess, but those aren't going to be the ones that's going to be part of it. But it's about the environment and the footprint and everything. The other thing is that continuing to... to fund the engine replacement program for tractors and marine vessels. I think they have around $900,000 available. Individuals that qualify can get up to $125,000 to replace an engine, but that wouldn't cover the whole thing. It's up to 75%. The other thing is probably one of the more complicated things that APCD is dealing with is up until for the last several years, the county has been taking care of their payroll. They're not going to do that anymore. So they have to transition to a contractor that's going to do that. So we've selected, we've approved their selection of that. And the main thing is the software system. that is used in-house has to change. And anybody that's ever changed platforms from one item, one type of software to another knows how complicated that can be. So that was a big deal. And they've got about six months to get that complete. And in finalizing or agreeing on their budget for the remainder of the year, I believe it was. Anyhow, it was a busy meeting, even though most of the supervisors that are there, all five of them were on it, four of them were out at a meeting in Sacramento. But we did have a quorum, so it was still good. So, thanks.

Thank you. How many staff does APCD have when you talked about changing HR systems?

Man, that's a good question. I think in the 50s. I think it's about somewhere in the 50s, I think.

Because I would just say, you know, the IWMA had to change similarly, you know, handling of payroll and we've been through multiple changes. iterations of contractors trying to find the right solution. So it could be painful, I'm telling you.

It was a difficult search for them. And I think the most painful part is going to be for staff that's using it, which is only going to be three or four people in-house. But to learn software that does what it does, if you know anything about Excel, people know it at the 1% or 2% level. you know, or QuickBooks and stuff like that. And if you really want to learn it in depth, it is, it's like learning AutoCAD. It's insane. And as soon as you have a question, if there's not somebody you can tap on the shoulder, it becomes extremely frustrating. So I wish them a lot of luck in that because it can be very difficult.

Thank you. Council Member Peek.

Yeah, I went to two events this weekend that were just great. The Sippin' Shop was fantastic. A lot of business action downtown. It seemed to be the happening place to be Friday night. The memorial on Monday was fantastic. It was just a great homage to the fallen soldiers of this country and just a great event all around. I also want to just was very happy this weekend that everywhere around me and anywhere I rode my bike or went for a run, people were weed whacking. So they're getting ahead of that fine and keeping our community safe. And it just we got one more weekend. But the cacophony was a welcoming noise. Thank you, everybody.

John Potter, Thank you, yes, I spent several hours and not several hours, but more than one hour weeding this weekend myself, so I know exactly what you're talking about um I see I at the idea may meeting and integrated waste management authority. We actually declined to accept a grant from the APCD for a charging station. The $80,000 cost seemed extremely excessive to the board, as well as the taking up of a couple of parking spots, a very limited number there. So that was kind of interesting. You don't hear that or do that often in terms of declining to take a grant. but the board did on about a seven to one vote um and let's see i think that's all i had committee-wise yeah oh we did uh we had the mayor's meeting here in atascadero uh the previous friday and we had a discussion made a presentation by the slow cog staff regarding the next iteration of rena or regional housing needs assessment or allocations. And it's interesting, the state is looking at more than doubling the regional housing needs allocation to our county. And our county is one of the first ones, or our COG is one of the first ones in the state to go through this next iteration. And of course, they have a very convoluted way of kind of estimating what they think our county should accommodate in terms of uh new housing and that that means that we of course as individual jurisdictions will ultimately be allocated a number that we will have to zone for uh and uh you know that doesn't mean they'll get built but that we will have to zone for so that there's going to be an interesting discussion on that on that as time goes on so that's all i have does any council member have an individual determination council member phone

I do arising from our discussion today. The dinosaur bone thing just really ticks me off that we're having to deal with this. And it's such a perfect example of the ways in which well-intentioned things at one point aimed in one direction create this layer cake of additional costs and obligation that affects all kinds of underrelated projects and make it tough to build the housing. So you gotta choose between housing for the young people of our community so that they have a future here and so we can have a workforce for our businesses that make us grow. and, you know, some maybe missing out on a few old fossils someplace, you know, I'm with the kids. I would like, and I sense that we have a lot of agreement on that in the council, so I would just like to see, this is something that I would like to bring up with our elected representatives at the state level, and who I do get to see from time to time at events, and I would love to be able to speak on behalf of our entire council in saying that we would I appreciate them taking a second look at that particular requirement and similar requirements because it makes it very hard. If they're going to ask us to zone for twice as much housing, if somebody's going to actually build that housing, we need to make it workable.

So, you know, we have a legislative platform and I certainly agree with you and certainly would love to have you or any of us that speaks with our state legislators about our frustrations as cities with these, these kinds of things that the state legislature comes up with many times they come up with them and You know, years go by, they become more and more of a burden and more and more of impediment. And they, you know, they just, they never seem to take something away. You know, they always add more requirements. They never seem to take something away. They add more reporting requirements and you generate reports that nobody reads, et cetera. As far as, you know, representing all of us, I probably, you probably have a consensus on that thought process. I don't, I'm looking to counsel and or the, Deputy city manager, you don't see any problems with any one of us who's in conversations with, you know, verbal conversations with our elected state representatives of expressing that opinion.

No, I think we, you guys have your approved legislative platform. You know what that stands for, where that falls within what the council feels. And so expressing how you as an individual council member feels or how that states. Yes. I think we say in our legislative platform that if the city as a whole is going to take a stance, it has to fit within that. And then we will send. But I think having those conversations as you will meet or are out and about is exactly what you guys do as our city council.

I think in general, you know, certainly the council has repeatedly in conversations on items addressed its frustration with those kind of things that the state imposes on us. So more from my perspective, more power to you. I know you have a closer relationship with some of our state elected representatives than some of the others of us on council. So I would certainly welcome you to do that.

The more pages that can go in the trash, the better.

So thank you. Okay.