Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everybody.

All right. Can you hear me okay? All right. There we go. All right. I'll bring this session to order of the Atascadero Planning Commission this August 18th, 6 p.m. We'll start with the flag salute. Would you go ahead and lead us in that?

Please rise.

Are we waiting for one, Commissioner?

We can continue with business, and we'll note the time that she arrives.

Okay. Just wanted to make sure we didn't want to hold anything up already. Could I get a roll call, please?

Chairperson Anderson?

Here.

Vice Chairperson Panascio? Present. Commissioner Farrell?

Present.

Commissioner Heath is absent. Commissioner Jones?

Present.

Commissioner Keene is not here yet. Commissioner O'Malley?

Here.

Five present, one absent, one late.

All right. Thank you, Ms. Horn. Okay. All righty. Just want to welcome everybody here and online. Do we have anybody online that is listening in? Can we see that? If you are, we got two people.

We no longer allow online participation, but we do have our consultants online for the second item.

She gave me either a peace sign or that two people are online. Welcome. Thank you for tuning in. Hopefully I'll get more followers as we go. Alrighty. Okay. Well, we're going to go ahead and move on to our public comment. This is the portion of the meeting where the public has the ability to comment on any of the matters that are under the Commission's purview that is not on the agenda right now. So if we have anybody who would like to comment now, seeing none, we'll go ahead and close public comment. Thank you. All right. And now we'll go ahead and open public comment for the consent calendar. Okay. Do we have anybody who would like to comment on the consent calendar? Nope. All right. Seeing none, I'll go ahead and close public comment on the consent calendar. And any of the commission members would like to comment on the consent calendar or pull any item from the consent calendar? There's one item. Minutes? No? No? No corrections to minutes? Okay.

Mr. Chairman, I'll be recusing myself for the minutes since I was not present at that meeting.

Oh, thank you. Okay. Perfect. All right. Can I get a motion to accept the or approve the consent calendar?

I motion to approve the consent calendar.

I'll second. Okay, motion by Commissioner Farrell, seconded by Vice Chair Panascio. Can I get a roll call, please?

Commissioner Farrell?

Yes.

Vice Chairperson Panascio?

Yes.

Chairperson Anderson?

Yes.

Commissioner O'Malley?

Yes.

That passes 4-0. Okay, perfect.

Moving right along. We don't have any old business, no old business, so that's good. And community development staff reports. We're going to go right on to our first agenda item. So I guess we've got Mr. Gomez, our associate planner here, who's going to give us a as our predecessor would say, a dazzling presentation.

Yes, good afternoon, Planning Commissioner. I'm ready to dazzle. Thank you. I know you guys have a long night ahead of you, hopefully, so Omar, why not? But I want to make this as quick as possible. So project in front of you today is pretty straightforward one, hopefully. This is the Sandy Ness small lot subdivision. It's project number SBDV 26-0030. And it's located at 6375 Sandy Ness Avenue. There's three other addresses up to 6385 Sandy Ness Avenue associated with those lots. So we'll go ahead and jump right into it. As I mentioned, the project is located at 6375 and 6385 San Ynez Avenue. It is near the intersection of San Ynez and Atascadero Avenue. It has a land use designation of high density residential and a zoning designation of residential multifamily with a 24 unit per acre density. It is two existing lots as they stand right now. Each of those lots have two detached single family homes and together those two lots total 0.56 acres. So the applicant is requesting a vesting tentative parcel map, AT260015, and a master plan of development. And so they essentially are hoping to subdivide those two lots into a total of four lots. And the goal is to have one house on each of those resulting four lots. So on your screen right now is kind of a depiction of their tentative map, which I marked up so you can see the parcel lines a little bit easier. With lot one being on the bottom left, lot two top left, lot three top right, and lot four bottom right. So you will notice that those lots range from about 3,200 square feet to about 6,800 square feet. We'll talk a little bit more about minimum lot sizes here in the next section. So, as I mentioned earlier, the lot are zoned residential multifamily with a 24 unit per acre density for that zone. The minimum parcel size is typically 0.5 or half an acre net. However, our multifamily standards and cottage cluster standards do allow small lot subdivisions of multifamily properties and provide requirements for them to meet our cottage cluster standards. This project is unique in that all the units are already existing. So basically, it required us to go back, review for what standards were still at play, and see what we can bring the site into compliance with if we needed to. And for those things that would be kind of onerous for an already developed couple of lots, work with the applicant to request them as exceptions. In this case, the site as developed is kind of a pretty good example of what we would expect a cottage cluster to look like even under our new code standards. And so there are two exceptions that they're really requesting here. One is a unit footprint size. So cottage clusters are really supposed to have an 800 square foot footprint, all of these units are already existing. And so they existed before that standard was in play. We're obviously not going to require the applicant reduce the standards of those structures. So the exception is included in the request for that CUP for a master plan development. Similarly, there is a requirement that for new units, they have a designated pedestrian path. And so in this case, the driveway is already existing, sorry, pedestrian path to the right-of-way to any common areas. In this case, the driveway to the right-of-way is already existing. And so there were some logistical issues with putting in a new pedestrian path there without requiring you know level of improvement that would potentially subject them to some level of grade differentiation to building code and then still me a fire access requirements, so that was a good one to also request an exemption for. There are a couple of items that we're asking for compliance with and they're being conditioned as part of their condition of approvals. First and foremost, you know, the fencing as is shown on that image there is way above our front yard setback, sorry, front yard fencing standards. It's basically a six foot tall fence. It actually just a few years ago per Google Street View used to be compliant with our code and those got installed by the previous owner. So we are conditioning that fencing to be cut down to meet our current code requirements. And the other one is parking because each parking or the parking lot has a few of the spaces that are needed for parking on the site. They aren't particularly marked. They also need a guest space. So we're asking that this driveway be striped and signed accordingly to make sure that those spaces are clearly designated for the units that they're for and that a guest part is clearly designated as well. And then again here, just the environmental review wasn't required for this. It is subject to a class 15 exemption under the California Environmental Quality Act, which exempts minor subdivisions for these kind of small urban lots with no major slopes. So there was a small correction that I had to make to the conditions of approval, which you'll see on your screen. And largely it has to do with we have a standard condition for all utilities being underground. And again, that one just, I apologize, flew over my head because everything's already built on this one. It's not just under all property. So yeah. My recommendation here is that the planning Commission adopt draft EC resolution approving this master plan development investing tentative parcel map at 26001 one sorry one one. it's project number SP TV 2600 30 based on findings and subject to conditions of approval with minor revisions to the conditions of approval to remove condition number 20 about undergrounding the utilities. And with that, I will open it to questions and discussion.

All right. Fantastic. Well, before we do questions, I'd like to back up a little and do ex parte for this project, if that's okay. Can I get an ex parte for Commissioner Jones?

No communications with any parties.

Okay. Commissioner Keene?

No ex parte.

Commissioner Farrell?

No communication.

Vice Chair Panoscio?

No ex parte.

Commissioner O'Malley?

No expertise.

No expertise. And the chair has no expertise. So we can go ahead and discuss with questions. Would we have any particular questions of Mr. Gomez at this time?

I don't have questions. I thought the staff report was thorough and takes into account the existing conditions. So I thought it was nice work. And I'm strong. Well, I'd be willing to make the motion move ahead after any other discussion.

Okay.

I just questions more of a curiosity question it is going to be single level or two levels is that been.

The existing homes are all one story right.

And there's no external enforcement for that guest parking it would all be amongst the tenants or.

We did condition a easement. So they're showing a driveway easement on their map right now. And we're also going to condition that agreement that goes along with that easement that tells us who maintains what and who's responsible will also include provisions for the guest parking spot.

Okay. I just didn't want us to be responsible for that.

I have a question. I'm just curious. So the zoning for the lot is RMF 24, correct? Correct.

That is correct.

And is that, is it going to be RMF 24 after the general plan approval as well?

I believe so.

So if the vision for this area is to be higher density, wouldn't a larger lot kind of align with that vision more so than breaking it down into a smaller cluster?

Yes, except that this lot is already developed as it stands. So It is, yeah, it's also, thank you, Kelly, it's also technically two lots. So they could theoretically sell a lot individually and continue with those two properties. They have the infrastructure there for it to be, to act as a small lot subdivision. And they still are going to be four lots zoned RMF 24. If the property owner were to come back and want to utilize that density, they'd likely have to figure out the driveway extents and how to orient the houses in those units that are small enough to accommodate additional units there. But this is a good example of kind of those postage stamp subdivisions that allow a variety of housing and not just really dense apartment buildings in our community.

Great. Thank you. Okay.

All righty. Well, let's go ahead and invite the applicant up to speak if he's here. Is the applicant here? If you'd like to speak, it's not necessary.

Yeah, Max Zappas, local resident developer representing the owners of the property. Just kind of speaking to that last question. By doing this, we give four different lots, four different owners. Those four individual owners can take better advantage of state law. So they can do multifamily kind of like junior ADUs, ADUs on all these lots, hopefully. Who knows? But as like an investor, you can't do that. So it should help densify. But hope you go for it. Thanks.

Well, thank you. Okay. Are there any members of the public wishing to speak on this item?

No. Okay. Seeing none, we're going to go ahead and close public comment.

Are there any more discussion items that the commissioners would like to field? Any other questions? Okay. And Commissioner Jones, you wanted to make that motion?

Yeah, sure. I'll move the staff recommendation is modified with condition 20 with the strikethrough on the underground and utilities. Okay. Do I get a second?

I'll second.

All right. We have a motion from Commissioner Jones and a second from Vice Chair Panaccio. Can I get a roll call?

Commissioner Jones?

Aye.

Vice Chairperson Panaccio? Chairperson Anderson?

Yes.

Commissioner Farrell?

Yes.

Commissioner Keene? Yes. Commissioner O'Malley?

Yes.

Motion passes 6-0. All right.

Congratulations. Good luck with your project. All right. All right. Well, we're going to go ahead and move on to number two on our agenda item. Now, this is going to get a little jittery, so bear with us. We're going to try to do this as smoothly as possible. So what I was thinking is that we would do ex parte for the portion that is not recused because we're going to have some recusals here. So I'll just run through ex parte. This is just on the portion that you're not recusing for. Okay. All right. Ex parte, Commissioner Jones. None. Commissioner King.

I have none.

Commissioner Farrell. None. Vice Chair Panaccio. Sorry.

No ex parte.

Commissioner O'Malley.

No ex parte.

I need water. And the chair has no ex parte. All right. We're going to go ahead and ask Ms. Gleason to go ahead and dazzle us with her presentation on what we know she's worked very hard on.

Good evening. Thank you all for joining us today. We are able to go through the entire presentation before recusals, and then we can do our recusals after that. So this is the finale of the 2045 general plan and its final EIR. So going over process tonight, we will do the staff's presentation. The commission can ask clarifying questions after staff's presentation that are not necessarily related to specific areas of recusal. We will open it for public comment. people might show up. And then we will do our recusals after the public comment period, and that will allow us to vote on different segments of the general plan without overstepping with conflicts of interest. So it's been broken into three segments for your vote on recommendation this evening. So tonight's presentation, we're going to go over a little bit of the draft 2045 general plan. Some of this you've seen before, but it's a large document. It's a great document. We only do it once every 20, 25 years. So it's exciting that we're at the finish line. We'll talk a little bit about the final EIR that was prepared with any response to comments that we received. And then the planning commission will take action. So a little bit about where we are, we made it to the end. Started this process in 2021 and here we are in 2026 and we have made it. So this process was a five phase process. Every single phase of the process had commission input, council input, community input to get to where we are today, which is the very, very, almost very end. So this is kind of our last phase of the project. We did post our draft 2045 general plan for the public and anybody to comment on anything that they saw that might need comment or clarification. After that, we did do another community engagement series where we went through some of the draft general plan policies and requested some input and went over the outline of what that framework looked like. During that time, we were preparing a draft environmental impact report and fiscal analysis for review by the public and decision makers. We did post the draft environmental impact report for its required 45-day public comment period in April of 2026, and we brought the fiscal analysis to Council in May. Since then, the public comment period is closed, so we've been working on revisions to the draft general plan and preparing the final environmental impact report. Today, we are at the first of our public hearings for adoption. We will be going to council next, and then we will have our final 2045 general plan in place. So just a little bit of background on some of our public participation process. This was a five-year process. We had over 17 public outreach events and meetings to garner input from the community. We did, our consultants set us up with this fabulous online interactive survey. We had almost 700 people participate. and kind of take pictures of ideas and place types as we call them and stick them all over the city so that we could understand what people's vision was both from a land use perspective and a built environment perspective. And we also did a semester-long project with the Atascadero High School students where we were trying to engage the youth and get them to provide some input. Really, all they wanted was chicken restaurant and Chick-fil-A is coming, so I think we have checked that one off the list. What we did is we moved forward with sort of these focus areas of change, and we really looked at areas that had services, that had... the ability to sort of increase additional density, and maybe there are commercial areas where we're looking at how we really hone business enterprise and what kind of businesses and services would best serve Atascadero residents and visitors, as well as provide us with a lot of fiscal sustainability and health over the years. So we kind of broke the city up into these focus areas, and these are the areas where the most change is happening throughout the city. Obviously, the west side, not changing very much, not a lot of access to utilities out there. Thank you. All of this was based on our overarching general plan vision statement that the council came up with early in the process through our public meetings. That is that Atascadero provides opportunities for all residents and business owners to thrive. Our community-focused culture pursues investments in land use strategies that create a diversity of housing types, support local businesses, improve all mobility modes, and respect our natural environment. Collective community actions improve conditions for current and future generations. So this is the overarching vision statement that the document and policies were based on. So we did draft a general plan with that in mind, included our land use diagram and numbers of goals and policies to achieve that vision statement. This was our resulting land use plan where we changed a number of place types from what our current land use designations are today and kind of really honed that vision into something that was graphically represented with our map. In terms of our key policy framework, we started with sort of this idea of really big moves and what we needed to see and do into the future. That included supporting a mix of housing types throughout the city for all types of residents that want to come live here, attracting new industries and higher wage jobs to really, again, provide that foundation for fiscal sustainability and health throughout the future. We looked at improving mobility, access, and safety throughout our roads and our circulation system. We addressed public infrastructure needs and ensured fiscal sustainability. A typo on what? Okay. Well, we're past it now.

Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. We'll fix it. I know you're just staring at me. So our general plan, there's a number of elements that are required as part of a general plan, but you can choose to combine those into whatever structure of chapters you wish to do. So we combined those essential elements into seven chapters, six of which are included in this 2045 general plan. Our housing element, as a side note, is adopted on a totally different schedule. So that gets incorporated, but is not part of what we're looking at this evening. So our first chapter was land use and community form. So this chapter has a lot of the policies that talk about preserving neighborhood character and the type of character that we envision our city having into the future when we explore opportunities for growth. So we have a number of goals and policies that address development citywide, including sort of unique areas within the city and what we envision for some of our new job centers and light industrial areas of the city. Again, our focus is maintaining our rural character, especially on the west side and some of our larger lot areas, supporting a vibrant city center and providing places for a variety of uses to support us with our economic base. We chose to add an economic development chapter. This was a big focus of the city and city council and what we heard from the community. This is not a required element, but it does bring together sort of the vision and focus on a certain level of economic development that our town is very interested in. So we have policies that look at diversifying the economic base and expanding employment opportunities throughout the city. And that's done through attracting new businesses, but also supporting existing businesses to thrive and grow in the city as well. helps us support emerging business trends that we might be able to capitalize on for some economic growth, ensuring opportunities for a wide range of goods and services for both residents and visitors to the area. And again, that focus on fiscal health, which is a theme throughout most of our chapters. Our mobility chapter is kind of what a lot of people would think of as our circulation chapter. So here we kind of have policies that balance more multimodal developments and travel throughout the city with an emphasis on bike and pedestrian enhancements throughout the city. Also looking to support interchange improvements. So we don't have a lot of control over Caltrans, but always looking for ways that we can support sort of cross traffic from east to west in the city. Our recreation open space and natural resources element talks a lot about resource preservation providing adequate park space and recreation resources for people within the Community. We want to ensure adequate park facilities throughout the city, so that kids have places to play, and we also have a lot of natural environments that we can enjoy. And this chapter does recognize our natural areas as valuable sort of park and open space resources as well. And our public services and infrastructure chapter, this one's always a big one for us because we do have a lot of infrastructure in the city, a lot of miles of roads, a more limited wastewater system. And so this chapter really focuses on ensuring that we respond to long-term growth with our growth plan for the 2045 vision and ensuring adequate services and capacity. And lastly, we have our safety and emergency preparedness chapter. So this focuses a little bit more on staffing and making sure that we have adequate support for our emergency responders. It addresses a lot of risks that the city sees wildfire risks, flood risks, geologic hazards. It also addresses noise. And so it kind of overlaps with circulation and mobility and making sure that we have adequate connections for evacuations and access. And so while we worked on the general plan, it was being reviewed through the CEQA process where we prepared our environmental impact report. So CEQA does require that any discretionary action go through a process of CEQA analysis. For general plans, it usually ends up in an EIR because there's always regional impacts that we don't have a whole lot of control over. And we can't move our project to a different city. So there are some factors that we are just stuck with. It's basically a public disclosure document. So we disclose those impacts to the public as part of this process. So we did circulate the EIR for 45 days. We dropped that on April 20th, 2026, and it went through June 4th. And it outlined three main classes of impacts as well as all the analysis that went behind it. So class one are those significant and unavoidable impacts that no matter kind of what you do, there are not a lot of options to mitigate those. We do have some significant impacts, but they were able to be mitigated. And we'll go through those in the next slides. And then less than significant impacts. Most of our analyses and impacts were the class three level. Our document did a lot to sort of self-mitigate a lot of the impacts in our policies and our goals. So our first class two impact was to paleontological resources. So we did incorporate a mitigation measure to address this and require some additional studies if somebody was doing significant building or development within a sensitive area. We also had a class two impact identified to public services to ensure that we have adequate wastewater capacity. As you guys know, we are working on upgrades to our wastewater treatment plant, and we want to make sure we don't get ahead of ourselves with development. So we did add a policy to the general plan through mitigation measure that requires us to look at adequate service capacity. Air quality is our class one impact. And so this has a lot of regional implications. Air doesn't stop at the city limits. People drive through the city. There's projected regional growth. And so this was an expected class one impact. We did have some mitigation measures identified that would help to reduce some of those impacts. But even with those mitigation measures identified, it remains significant and unavoidable. Again, these thresholds are set by the state, so there's not much we can do, you know, at a local level to modify those thresholds. It's important to point out that the 2045 general plan actually has less of an impact on air quality than the current general plan. That is because we have numerous policies for infill development and densifying around our core where there might be future transit opportunities and people can walk or bike to where they are going. And so that was just kind of important to note, even though there is an impact, it's less than if we continue developing under our existing general plan. We also had some population estimates that might be a little bit high compared to what regional trends are doing. This will allow us flexibility in the future. So should we experience any sort of growth in a certain area, we have some flexibility to allow that without revisiting the general plan in the EIR. We did receive three comments during the public review process period. One from Caltrans, the Tascadero Mutual Water Company had some comments and Fish and Wildlife had some comments. So Fish and Wildlife and Caltrans sort of reiterated some of the general premise of our general plan and kind of clarified that they have some requirements when people go through a construction process that need to be followed. We didn't need to make any modifications to the general plan based on this because those were already included in there as part of the normal development process that we go through. Tascaro Mutual Water Company did have some comments just clarifying some of their ownership and maintenance and their kind of responsibilities, referring to one of their newer plans. So we did make some updates based on their comments. So as part of a recommendation to adopt an EIR, there's a couple accompanying legal documents that are super, super fun to read through, and I hope that you all did so in great detail. And so part of your recommendation to adopt the final EIR for council tonight will be also adoption of these three accompanying documents. So the first one is our mitigation monitoring and reporting plan. This one includes our five mitigation measures. Happy to say that all five of those mitigation measures have already been incorporated into the general plan. And so we can check that off the box, but it is part of our required adoption. We will also be recommending that the council adopt a statement of overriding considerations. This is for those class one impacts that cannot be mitigated. And the state does allow us to balance the economic, legal, social, technological, all sorts of other benefits associated with any action that we're going to take against those unavoidable environmental impacts. And so we can make statements and statements of overriding consideration that state what those benefits are and that we are openly making those statements to allow for some significant avoidable impacts with benefits that outweigh those. And then we'll be recommending that the council adopt findings of fact. So these are findings associated with all of the impacts addressed in the general plan and the final EIR. And again, highlighting that finding number three, where benefits do outweigh any sort of negative environmental impact. I did want to point out it's not necessarily part of a standard general plan in terms of its analysis, but the council did ask for a fiscal impact study to be brought forward for the general plan to ensure that whatever we were planning for the future was fiscally sustainable and would not put the city In a bad spot. So we did do a long-term fiscal analysis for the proposed plan And it did show that in that we would be fiscally positive again It's a little bit of a crystal ball moment, but we did have some consultants that were able to dial down worked really hard with our finance team to come to some of these assumptions and we do believe that build out of the 24 520 45 general plan will be fiscally positive for the city and So in terms of next steps, tonight we'll make a recommendation that will be forwarded to city council. I did wanna let you all know, remind you that our comprehensive zoning code update is following almost right behind on the heels of this. So we are doing a policy, a last policy check-in at city council on September 8th. We'll be coming to planning commission for a recommendation on October 6th. That's gonna be a great document. It's even longer than the general plan, so be prepared. We'll go to city council for first reading October 27th and our plan is to do second reading November 10th. So our new zoning will be in place by the end of the year. So this is staff's recommendation. It is to adopt the draft resolution recommending adoption of the 2045 general plan, certification of the final EIR and adoption of all of the accompanying documents that come along with that. We will have a revised section related to recusals. I believe I've handed that out for you this evening, and then there will be another modification to that as we move forward. And that does conclude our presentation. We are available for clarifying questions, and then we will get into recusals, discussions, votes, and all of those fun things.

All right, that was a fantastic presentation. Thank you so much for that. I know you've worked really hard on, as all the staff has worked really hard on this over the last five years. I've been here for much of it, and I know it's great to see the city move along like this many years to come with great growth and economic growth. So right now I'm gonna ask a question. Are we gonna do... Commissioner questions prior to public comment, or are we going to hold that off until after?

We can do commissioner questions if they are kind of clarifying or procedural questions at this point.

Okay.

So I would just advise that we limit our questions to things that do not include any recused topics. Okay. Any questions, any clarifying questions or procedural questions? There we go. Commissioner Keene.

I just want to clarify, this might be a dumb question. This is the environmental impact of the general plan on our city for the next until 2045. Yes. Okay. So certain resources within the city and the impacts on those. Thank you. That was, that was all. I just wanted to like, make sure we.

No, that was, that was a clarifying question. Perfect. Any other questions? No. Okay. Well, we'll go ahead and. Oh. Go ahead, go ahead.

I was looking at the table 7-1, and there's a couple items on here that I just had a question about. GHG-1.1 says the updated City of Atascadero Climate Action Plan to identify ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit climate change impacts on residents to the extent possible. The Climate Action Plan shall integrate the state's future GHG reduction goals such as the state's goal of attaining carbon neutrality by 2045. I was just curious if you could clarify how we are integrating the state's goal of attaining carbon neutrality by 2045. Could you expand on that a little bit?

Sure. I guess the short answer is we don't know exactly how we're doing that yet because we don't have an updated climate action plan. But I can say that around that also we work with our regional partners. Air Pollution Control District comes out with a lot of best management practices for projects to try and achieve that. So a lot of the details will come out during the update to a climate action plan. But we are on track with our regional partners in the way that certain project details are implemented to make headway towards that goal.

Great, thank you. Because carbon neutrality is pretty, that's a big jump. Another section on utilities and services systems. This is USS-3.1. It says Action D require all proposed new projects and new development requiring wastewater collection and treatment service to be reviewed for adequate wastewater collection and treatment capacity prior to issuance of building permits. How are we doing on treatment capacity?

I can speak to that briefly. Thank you, Commissioner Panagio. So right now, we are nearing capacity at a wastewater treatment plant. So the stopgap is to put in this particular condition, this mitigation measure, to kind of wait and see how development goes over the next few years. But if we don't get our wastewater treatment plant project completed, which we do anticipate we will, but if for some reason something happens and it's significantly delayed, We will have to get into a spot where we need to monitor growth in the city and particularly, you know, the addition of things that will hook to the wastewater treatment system. So this is sort of a stopgap kind of measure. We just hope we don't have to get to that spot because we're working feverishly to get the project done.

Sounds good. Thank you for the clarifications.

Good questions. Good questions. Any other questions? All right. Okay. Well, we'll go ahead and move on to public comment. If we have anybody, we don't have any members of the public to comment, so we'll give it 30 seconds, 10 seconds. Okay, seeing no one, we'll go ahead and close public comment. And at this point, I believe our city attorney will go ahead and take over in figuring out how we're gonna handle these recusals.

Thank you, Chair Anderson, members of the commission. What I'm going to be talking about now may seem unnecessary or over paranoid in terms of the segmenting that we have presented to you, but as the city's city attorney and chief paranoia officer, I have to look as if the FPPC is overseeing each of these decisions. So we want to make sure that each of you remains in the FPPC's good graces, and that's why we are going through this process. It may seem somewhat unfair if you can't participate, but the FPPC rules are that you are not supposed to participate in a matter in which it affects your financial interests. Actually, unusually, we have a little bit of updated information. We have yet another commissioner who has a conflict this evening so there's only one of you who does not have a conflict commissioner keen so you will be the one that will be the sole person when we start flipping coins but the reason is not because conflicts are a bad thing it's just the proximity of where your properties are to some of the changes that we're doing there changes in intensity of use That can be a material impact on your financial interest. So that's why we're doing it this way. So basically what we're going to do is we're going to segment into A and B. We're going to flip a coin to determine which we hear first and we'll determine how we bring back commission interest. members based on whether it's A or B. So if we do segment A, there are, it looks like four of you that have conflicts on there. So four of you would have to participate in this process because Chair Anderson has conflicts in both. We'll probably exclude him from that process. The other reason that we're doing it this way is your seventh member, Commissioner Heath, has a personal matter that uh prevents attendance at this meeting um it's not simple uh absence uh for personal uh for convenience um it's a there's a serious issue and i'm not going to get into it any more than that but under the fppc's opinion letters um that is a sufficient basis uh not to have to continue this to the next meeting where that commissioner is present so That's a lot of information. I wish I could say I'm as smart as the person who prepared most of this, but Taylor Foland, who is currently on a plane somewhere, probably over Greenland at this point, has done the lion's share of this work. I'm grateful for her having done this. She has done a fantastic job, not only on the segmenting, but the underlying work with the general plan and zoning. So I wanted to give her a shout out when I have that opportunity. So at this point, it appears that we have some conflicts of the five of you, I can summarize them if you would like it would probably go a little bit faster on the conflicts are in the two zones. That will be discussing and I believe it's the when we get these right here, there is the low density multifamily and medium density.

I believe it's medium density and mixed use.

And mixed use, that's correct. And some of the commissioner members have properties within 500 feet of potential changes in those zones. So that is the general nature of the conflicts for each of the five commissioners who have those conflicts. So the recommendation would be to go ahead and have those commissioners step away from the dais. And then we will bring you back, depending on what the coin flip is going to be, whether it Not we're doing segment A or segment B first.

So I think, do they need to make individual statements or can they just say, I recuse, go down the line?

I would just say very generally because it involves my real property interests.

And I just wanted to make a quick comment that Because this is a general plan and it covers such a broad basis, this is not really uncommon for this type of recusal. So it's not affecting anybody. Nobody should be ashamed of recusing themselves.

Yeah.

So should I go first? All right. I'm going to recuse myself because I have a real estate interest in the two of the affected zones. So.

Dave, I just want to clarify, can they step into the rear room?

As long as they step out of the room, that's adequate, yes.

You can turn off your microphone, please. Sure, walk the rest of us through that.

Hold on, we have the A and B sections, right, that not everybody's recusing for both?

Because we have conflicts on them, you can't, participate in the decision as to whether it's A or B, because that's influencing what comes first. So that's why all five have to step down right now. And then we'll bring you back depending on what happens with A and B. And I have a coin to do the flip for A and B. Gotcha.

Okay. I am recused myself from the portions of the 2045 general plan identified in the draft planning commission resolution due to that decision affecting property within 500 feet of my real estate interest.

I am recusing myself from the portions of the 2045 general plan identified in the draft planning commission resolution due to that decision affecting property within 500 feet of my real property interest.

I am recusing myself from the portion of the 2045 general plan identified in the draft planning commission resolution due to that decision affecting property within 500 feet of my real property interest. Thank you.

I'll be recusing myself for the same matters for Portola, real interest properties related at Portola and Morrow Avenue.

And with the exception of Chair Anderson, don't go too far because we're going to be making this decision on A or B very quickly and we'll be bringing some of you back fairly quickly.

I have all the power now.

Commissioner Keene at this point, I will go ahead and flip a coin. Heads will be A and tails will be B and I'll let you know and then we'll go from there.

Great.

tales so we'll be starting with segment B and with segment B, we only have two Commissioners who are conflicted out Commissioner Jones and Commissioner Anderson, so we can bring back Commissioners panacea. feral and o'malley for this matter.

Okay.

This is what I get for living in sticks. Nobody wants to rezone my property.

And I had straws ready to go if it had been A, and then we would have picked who would be coming back. But because they don't have conflicts, each of them can participate.

When you said I was the only one without a conflict, I thought you were being hyperbolic.

Okay, at this point, we've gone ahead and seated the commissioners and brought them back without the conflicts on segment B. So we'll go ahead and start discussing the portion of the general plan that involves segment B.

just as a reminder as segment b deals with medium density residential and mixed use land use designations so if you have any questions or comments on discussion on that and then we will take a vote on that segment does anyone have any questions on that section

No questions? Anyone want to make a motion?

So the motion would be if you look at draft resolution A, there is a, in section four, we are discussing item number two. And so it would be a recommendation to city council to adopt the medium Dunn City multifamily land use designation and mixed use land use designations in accordance with the 2045 general plan. Sorry, I have a question.

Go for it.

Okay, I'm overall, I just realized I'm very confused as to why we had to split this up and how this has to deal with the environmental impact report. And maybe it's because I did not do enough reading, but can you just like walk me through, like I have never been in planning commission before because I have no, I don't understand what we're doing.

yeah so our our general plan covers everything pretty generally but sometimes a little specifically um including the designate designation of each individual parcel with a specific land use so the commissioners that recuse themselves and their remained recused have property within 500 feet of areas that will change and some of our changes are minor and some of our changes are greater but they all affect the development potential of those properties so For the medium density residential, it's going from 20 to 24 units an acre to 13 to 24 units an acre. But some of those properties also used to be zoned low density multifamily that were 10 units per acre, and now they're bumping up into that higher category. So that's a significant density change and development potential for those properties. For the properties that are now being zoned mixed use, those used to be zoned a different commercial designation. And while we allowed mixed use development there, we're getting much more specific about development standards and types of mixed use development that are allowed. And we've established different densities for those zones as well. So because of those factors, those commissioners can't participate in this particular discussion. What we're doing tonight is we're adopting one really long resolution that has all of the segments broken out in draft resolution A. And so what you guys are asked to do immediately as part of this vote is just make a recommendation on the medium density multifamily designations within the general plan and any such recommendations. policies related to such and the mixed use designations as well. And so just by sort of segmenting our vote differently, even though it's not as graphically represented in that level of detail, it will allow us to have everybody participate and make a full overall recommendation on the general, this deals more with the general plan than the EIR. And then when we all come back together, we'll make a recommendation on remaining sections and the EIR. Okay.

Thank you for walking me through that. Now I understand. So what we're deciding right now is changing some stuff into that medium

Density.

Density, multifamily and mixed use land use designation. And it's just what is changing into that in the general plan.

So you're recommending action on anything on our general plan land use map that is zoned medium density, residential and mixed use at this point, regardless of specific location.

Okay, perfect.

Thank you. Okay.

Can you put the resolution on the screen?

I can, but that is not the words that you need to say right now. So if we look at draft resolution A in section four, number two, that second sentence has a recommendation statement in it that you would recommend that the city council adopt the medium density multifamily land use designation and mixed use land use designation in accordance with the 2045 general plan. And so that's the motion that would be made.

So I will make a motion for the planning commission to recommend the city council of the city of Atascadero adopt the medium density multifamily land use designation and mixed use land use designation in accordance with the 2045 general plan as shown in exhibit B. I will second that motion.

You need me to repeat it?

And now we need a roll call. Roll call. Oh, you're good. Yeah, I've done it like 1,000 times. You're good. Yeah, you're fine.

Commissioner Keene? Yes. Commissioner Farrell?

Yes.

Vice Chairperson Panascio?

Yes.

Commissioner O'Malley? Yes. Motion passes 4-0.

Okay, and at this point, we can invite Commissioner I'm looking at my list here. Commissioner Jones back, he does not have a conflict on the segment A. No, the FPPC rules say once you're brought back, you can sit on the rest of it. Yeah.

So now we're going to do low density.

Will I need to recuse myself for this section?

So in looking at the FPPC rules, once you're brought back as a result of the rule necessity, you're not required to leave after that. So that's why we just bring back Commissioner Jones at this point. But the remainder of you, since you were brought back due to the rule of necessity to make that quorum, you're not required to exit at that point.

Okay. Will we be participating in the discussion and the voting?

Yes, you can participate.

Thank you. So now we're going to be discussing a draft resolution A regarding low density.

So this is section four, number one. Can you put the graphic back on there?

So low density multifamily is kind of the more orangey color.

Does anyone have any questions or comments?

I'll make a motion to recommend the City Council of the City of Atascadero adopt the low density multifamily land use designation in accordance with the 2045 general plan as shown in Exhibit B. I'll second.

Commissioner Keene? Yes. Vice Chairperson Panascio?

Yes.

Commissioner Farrell?

Yes.

Commissioner Jones yes commissioner O'Malley yes motion passes 5, 0.

And at this point we can bring back a cherry Anderson for the balance of the determination.

You need to be absent more often so cannot you can get more practice.

Crystal's responsible for my cheat sheet, so she does a wonderful job. Thank you. Okay, well, thank you for doing that. We're going to go ahead and continue on to the general portion of discussion on the item. So does anybody have any questions or would like to have any discussion? It's discussion only, so would you guys like to have any discussion on the remaining portion of the EAR and the general plan.

I had one for staff with the resiliency examination of wildfire risk. In the long term, is that likely to help change some of the classifications of fire risk for our residents to have better outcomes for their insurability of their homes? I know that it's been an ongoing issue, and I don't know how that interface works, but we have the wildland interface.

That's a yet to be determined factor. It's not going to change our local classifications, which are set by the state at this time, but it could have impacts on insurance and insurance does use all of their own parameters for that. And we are very hopeful that that will take place. And that's the end goal. Thank you.

Any other questions? Any other discussions? items. No. Oh, oh, go ahead.

I just had one other one. I didn't know if we had a benchmark on the what the ultimate goals of the recreational areas were compared to other cities, particularly in Paso Robles, like do we have a acreage or facility per per capita? Is there a benchmark that we look at in a planning standard from the League of Cities or others to see how we're doing for those opportunities?

There are established standards. We don't necessarily compare ourselves to other regional communities. But since you bring this topic up, one of our next activities for next year is a Parks and Recreation Master Plan for the city. We'll be starting that activity and bringing some pieces of that activity to you and doing some public outreach on it. So although it's not a piece of the general plan, I mean, we do have the park section in the general plan, but it doesn't get into the things that we're going to get into with this detailed master plan that looks at all the ratios and all the things. Thank you.

All right, well, I don't see any more questions or comments. Do we hear a motion to accept the item in whole? All right.

This is a vote to to adopt the whole and I believe the motion to read the title of the resolution minus sections wanted to so we would read the title of the resolution as your recommendation and we would make clear that we are subtracting out from that sections one through two of section four of the resolution. Just to make it as confusing as possible.

Could you repeat that subsection one and two?

Yeah, if you look at section three of section four, it has some language about excluding sections one through two of section four. A lot of numbers. So you would make a motion to adopt draft resolution A, all of those words that are in there. and then accepting out those sections that are described in Section one through four or one through two of Section four of the resolution that were already voted on.

Anyone. There you go. I'll do it.

This is so monumental. I'll do it.

There you go.

You know me. I move that the Planning Commission accept draft PC Resolution A, the resolution of the Planning Commission. of the city of Atascadero, California, recommending the city council certify the final environmental impact report, adopt findings of fact pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act, adopt a mitigation and monitoring and reporting program, and adopt a statement of overriding considerations for the Atascadero 2045 general plan and zoning code update, schedule number 2024070598, and adopt the City of Atascadero 2045 general plan consisting of the following elements, land use and community form, economic development, mobility, recreation and open space, public services and infrastructure, and safety and emergency preparedness, minus section four, numbers one and two.

Excellent. Do I hear a second? Could you repeat the motion, please?

If you have another 30 minutes, yes, I can.

Do I hear a second?

I'll second that.

Okay, Commissioner O'Malley seconds. Okay, can we get a roll call, please?

Commissioner Keene? Yes. Commissioner O'Malley? Yes. Chairperson Anderson? Yes. Vice Chairperson Panascio? Yes. Commissioner Farrell? Yes. Commissioner Jones? Yes. Motion passes 6-0.

All right, everybody give yourself a round of applause. And the staff, that was wonderful. Thank you very much for that already. So, okay. What do we have next? Do we have any reports? No? Let me get to that section. Hold on. No management reports? Anything that the commissioners would like to speak about? Anything interesting going on they'd like to make comments on?

Well, I'm a middle school mom, so I was out there, out downtown, first day of school, watching everything. It was wonderful and it went smoothly and it was lovely to see the whole community out there taking photos by City Hall. And I grabbed my coffee and I sat on the corner because I wanted to watch El Camino and watch the traffic. And it went very smooth and I ran into several city officials out there and our police chief in uniform, which I think...

is wonderful helps the kids behave so it was a really nice first day of school out there so I just wanted to thank everybody for that yeah school school went pretty well the first day of school was kind of always a scary day when traffic and everything but went really well so any other comments yes I have a comment

I was out in downtown on Tuesday, and I could not find a parking spot, so we're going to need more parking, please. I had to park all the way on Entrada to go to the Hawaiian place, which is delicious, by the way. But I had to walk really far away, so we're going to need more parking. I don't know why we don't have enough parking here. The city should get on that. Just wanted to report back.

And I would like to request the ability to turn off mics from here. No, just... Okay.

I'm so glad that we're starting to have a minuscule parking problem for our downtown businesses.

That's always a good thing.

Lots of activity.

What's the timeline on the archways being installed? Is that still set for the end of August, I believe, on the north and south end of El Camino, the entry, the gateways?

Commissioner Farrell, you're getting into the director's report, which I was going to give you just in a moment.

Jumping the gun.

Yeah, I'll answer that along with a whole bunch of other things. And parking. Thank you, though.

All righty. Okay.

If everybody doesn't know, we got a comment from... We got one last comment. If you remember way back when at our last meeting a few months ago, we had discussed, we had requested... We actually need your mic to be that loud.

Really? To pick it up for the record. Yeah, thank you.

Okay. We we had requested a presentation on how parks get developed through the city and then also sidewalk development through the city. If you remember that I was just curious where we were with something like that.

I don't know that's a good one, I will follow up later, thank you for reminding us of that, thank you, I would refer them to the general plan.

Okay, if that's all the comments from the Commission, I will go ahead and hand it over to the Director. Phil, would you like to fill us in on your report, please?

Yes, Phil can fill you in. Thank you. Absolutely. There's lots of things filling in downtown, which is really nice as well. As you've seen, the LaModa project takes shape, the new three-story building that's going to be mixed use with a nice restaurant downstairs and residential above, and the restaurant spaces that are being built next door to that and the old Winter's Garage and Trunks Faw Place is going to move into there first, and other things will follow along with that. So downtown is really taking shape. You've probably also seen that Beach and Biscuits is finally starting their construction on their corner site right there. So that's happening. And a couple bigger projects aren't moving as quickly as we'd like to. Two of those are Del Rio Ranch and Dove Creek. Both of those are are probably going to go through some changes of ownership before we see anything happen on them. So they are stalled long term. I'll just let you know that you're probably not going to see anything happen there for quite a bit. Good thing is we're starting to final out some new buildings on the Del Rio Marketplace site, though, adjacent to the Valley Fresh Market. We just gave some final occupancies to the Shell buildings, not occupancy, but final approval for the Shell building on that property. You can see that that whole area is sort of taking shape and developing as a theme. It's really nice. And as Commissioner Farrell asked, the downtown, the arches, the phase two of the downtown, which is actually three projects. It's two arches and then repainting of the tunnel underneath Highway 101 and relighting that with a new theme. And there's been some engineering hurdles with the arches, especially the one on the south end. It's a pretty substantial structure. We're getting through that. I don't have an exact start date on that. I hope to know that soon when that project's actually going to start, but um the construction plans are coming together and and uh pier ratamaker has done a wonderful design with the metal work with those signs and really hopeful to see that it's really going to add such a nice touch to downtown and then in terms of policy work upcoming just when you thought we were done looking at policy stuff of course we have a lot of zoning to look at our team has been spending hours and hours making sure the zoning is looking good we've not only had to amend that for the general plan but we're also amending that for um just state law changes and some of the things that need to get cleaned up in there over the years you've seen a lot of it already but it's going to come to you for a final look soon it's going to go to council for a final look soon but right on the heels of that we're already sending out an rfp to write a new housing element which is a chapter in the general plan that we didn't touch this time but its due date is in 2028, and it's a year-long activity. So 2027 is going to be the year of the housing element. And this year, the state is asking us to increase the number of housing units that we should see in Atascadero and increase those affordability levels. They call that the RENA, as you recall, is the Regional Housing Needs Assessment or Allocation. And each of the communities now is still kind of deciding what those numbers will be but the entire number is bigger um probably 30 or 40 percent bigger than our last reading number for our county our region so I don't know how those will be allocated yet we'll find out as soon as we have some more information on that we'll have that to you and what that does it feeds back into our housing elements and um establishes our baseline for each affordability level and the general number of units. Now, I'm always happy to report that we've done really well in years past on developing the housing numbers we need to have. It's always difficult to get the extremely low, but we've been fortunate in this last cycle to have projects like Del Rio Ridge, which is now starting construction on the north end of El Camino Real, which has affordable housing units built with people's self-help housing. We've had other affordable projects, on the south end of town as well, and those are taking shape. So we've had a lot of voluntary direction in that particular arena. And then other policy work that we're probably working on, I mentioned earlier parks and recreation, master plan, and then what other things are gonna be doing? Kelly, do you recall the other list of items that we talked about the other day?

I think a short-term rental ordinance.

Oh, that one we got to bring back. That one everyone loves, short-term rentals. That's really tough. Airbnbs, we've had a lot of outreach on those. We've done a couple policy things on it. Council kind of tabled it, but we got to bring it back. And also, council has asked me to look at community facility districts. So I'll be doing... City Council Chambers, A presentation on that to counsel on, especially for the downtown for mixed use projects in October and so we'll see how that plays out and that's the. City Council Chambers, Additional call attacks that we put on larger residential projects, but what we're finding is that mixed use projects in the downtown are actually fiscally neutral to positive so. City Council Chambers, My alter that a little bit so lots of work going on. We have a great team in community development, and I'm also happy to answer questions that you might have about any other policy or development projects that are going on in town.

Earlier you said that a project stalled. Did you say Dove Creek or Barrel Creek?

Dove Creek.

Dove Creek.

Barrel Creek is actually still active, and there's a new owner for the property. We just met with him last week. Thanks for reminding me of that project. And they're thinking about changing the land uses just a little bit, tweaking it on site, but they haven't quite decided yet, but they're all in. And there's energy towards the public improvement plans, private improvement plans on site. So I think they've got that nailed down and they want to build it. So that's still on the table. So Barrel Creek's on the table. which will complete kind of Del Rio quite a bit, except for the Del Rio Ranch property at the southeast corner of Del Rio and El Camino will probably sit like that for quite some time. It's just a challenging property, not to mention the property has deed restrictions that Walmart left our community, which is really frustrating that they did that to us. So it's challenging. So we'll see what happens with that. Okay.

Well, thank you. Wonderful. Did you have any questions? Yeah. Well, Commissioner Keene would like to ask a question. If you would indulge her.

Bill. What's up with Chick-fil-A?

Sorry. What's going on with Chick-fil-A? Yeah. So Eric, tell us what's going on with Chick-fil-A. Eric is actually the project planner for Chick-fil-A. Okay.

I'm going to give your number. I'm going to give your number to my daughter so she can stop bothering me and she can bother you.

I know we reviewed the construction plans and they came in for a second check, but are they ready?

He was told she was going to get chicken nuggets this year. And if she doesn't get those chicken nuggets, you need to deal with her wrath. I'm done.

Maybe cater. I think we should be fine. We'll figure it out. Yeah, Chick-fil-A is still going. So we have building permit applications in for the Chick-fil-A building and for the building right next to it, which is a retail shell, which I'm sure you care about just as much as the Chick-fil-A. And they are in their second plan check right now. So we're actually in the throes of that review with us, FIRE building and Public Works per usual. um and yeah hopefully if they have any more corrections uh left it'll be pretty minor um what we typically try to do with our plan checks is on the second plot check for this these like major projects or you know larger commercial projects is we'll try to meet with the actual applicant team so as to avoid any further reviews after the second if we can um so that'll be probably next steps here if you have any leftover corrections but chick-fil-a specifically on my end i just finished my review yesterday and they do not have any more corrections for me.

So, so are we going to get chicken nuggets this year or what?

I mean, depends on how quickly they can build, but I'll, I'll be out there with a hammer if it makes sense.

Me too. And my daughter too. So you just let me know.

Seriously doubt they could build it in three months, but you never know. I think it's more like a six month. We'll see.

I'll tell her, I'll tell her she'll get chicken nuggets by next summer. Okay. Perfect.

Alrighty. Well, they did want to say that there is a new, uh, wing stop in town. So if you need your chicken fix, you know, you can always offer that up. Alrighty.

I'll see what she thinks about that.

Okay. Well, it looks like we are coming to the end of this, uh, Oh, one more question. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

I just wanted to compliment the city staff both on the presentation today, but on both things, the general plan and the applicant for the subdivision. But also, I'm friends with a couple of tenants off of Del Rio, and they've had some challenges with the state for certain components of their business, but they were very complimentary of the planning and building department every time and felt that they had an ally to help them through the process rather than impediments. I wanted you to hear that.

Thank you.

Always, always helpful. And you know what? I just want to say something. A lot of cities aren't as wonderfully helpful. They are an impediment and you go there and you just groan, you know, so wonderful. That's good to hear. Thank you. Sure. They appreciate the feedback and okay. So we're going to go ahead and adjourn this meeting until I guess September 1st is our next meeting. Yeah. Okay. Until September 1st, we'll see you all in. Thank you.