City Council - Regular Meeting

All right.

Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the regular meeting, Monday, August 10th, 2026. It's now 6 p.m. We'll get the meeting started. Speaker slips over there, if you get to sign the speaker slips for any item on the agenda, you can hand those to Yaysa Benson there, our commission secretary. We also have Zoom app for those that will be coming up if you want to do that. Same thing, there's the numbers and everything on what to get to. And remote telephone is also the same thing. And so with that, we'll get right into our meeting here. That's the one I was looking for. OK. Can we get a? CHRISTIE WOODARD.

Commissioner Brittingham? MIKE BOYLE.

Here. CHRISTIE WOODARD.

Commissioner Enciso? MIKE BOYLE.

Excuse me? That was you. MIKE BOYLE. Here. CHRISTIE WOODARD.

Oh.

MIKE BOYLE. Here.

CHRISTIE WOODARD. Enciso, Commissioner Enciso, who mentioned he had a work obligation. Do we want to excuse his absence?

I'm sorry, I can't hear that. Yeah, we can't hear you.

Commissioner Enciso advised that he had a work obligation today, and he could not make the meeting.

I'll make a motion to excuse. OK. Second. All in favor? Aye.

OK. Commissioner Van Heinen? Present. Vice Chair Newcomb?

Here.

And Chair Barron?

Here. Thank you. I don't have the whole staff, but we have Jason Benson, our secretary. We have Mike Thornton, our city engineer. And we have Will Coball, our city manager. Kelly Lucia is our planning director. And we have Catherine Reed as our city attorney. But with that, can we all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, please? Ready? Begin. Pledge of Allegiance. Okay, and with that, do we have any public comments on non-agenda items?

I have not received any public comments for non-agenda items.

Okay, thank you. And we'll go to approval of our minutes. Anybody have any corrections changes or can we get a motion to approve as is?

Motion to approve.

I'll second. All in favor?

Aye.

Okay. All right. Oh boy, take a breath. Here we go. Let me get that. All right. We have a public hearing, Mesa Verde specific plan area two. Amendment 2, project request by Mesa Verde Owners LLC for recommended approval of Environmental Assessment 25-3, EA 25-3, Environmental Assessment 25-4, which is EA 25-4, and Environmental Agreement 26-20, DA 25-4, General Plan Amendment 23-1, which is GPA 23-1, Specific Plan Amendment 23-1, specific plan 23.1, zone change 23.1, and ZCE 23.1, tentative track map 33931, revision two for tentative track map 33931, tentative track map 39086 through 39091, tentative track map 33931, Let's see, I lost my, Development Plan Review 24-6 through 24-11, Conditional Use Permit 24-5 through 24-10, and Mesa Verde Business Park Master Sign Program.

Thank goodness. Thank you for reading all that. Good evening, Chair, members of the Commission, members of the public. Thank you for being here this evening. This public hearing item is for the Mesa Verde Specific Plan. Just to orient ourselves generally, the project area is located in the northwest area of the city, shown in hatched orange on the image before you. The property is approximately, I'll just call it 1,400 or so acres in size. So before we get to the details of the project that you'll be reviewing this evening, I wanted to go through the entitlement history. This is the fifth time that this project area has received or is being considered for an entitlement. The first time was in 1985 under the Canyon Oaks specific plan area. A previous planning director, fun fact, went through the microfilm at Riverside County and was able to dig up this very, very old image here before you. But this project area was first entitled again in 1985 when the project was adopted by the Riverside County Board of Supervisors. It was an entirely residential project at the time with lots ranging in size from about 7,200 square feet to several acres in size. At that point in time, There were about 1,200 residential lots, and the project covered most but not all of the property that's currently covered by the Mesa Verde project. So this is the first entitlement that we have on file. Moving along to 1988, there was the Oak Valley specific plan. 216 was approved in October of 98. It included about 6,400 acres, had 13,000 residential units with varying densities, varying from low to very high. Also included were 560 acres of business park, 400 or so acres of commercial park schools and other uses. The next time this project area was entitled was in 2007. This was the Mesa Verde estate specific plan approved by the city of Cala Mesa October of 2007. It was proposed by Fiesta Development. This was a mixed use residential and commercial project on the same land area, so about 1,493 acres. At that point in time in 2007, the entitlement was for 3,850 residential units in varying densities from 4,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet. There were 61 acres of mixed uses at that time for commercial and residential, about 540 acres of open space. 10 years later was the fourth entitlement. This is the 2017 plan, and I'll toggle briefly between the two so you can see how similar they were. 2007, there's 2017. So the 2017 specific plan, which is the current entitlement that's active on the site, was approved to allow 3,650 residential units, 250,000 square feet of commercial space, Also mixed-use acreages, about 500 acres of open space, parks, private recreation, trails, and so forth. In 2017, the Yucaipa-Calamesa Joint Unified School District removed the middle school site because they determined that they didn't need that middle school site. There was one built adjacent to the project site in 2009. And just for the commission, the public's reference, no components of this 2017 plan have been implemented to date. Okay, so now the current project here before you, and it is a little difficult to read, I apologize, but this is a comparison table showing the difference between the 2017 and what I'll call the 2026 proposal. So as you can see on the table, there's a decrease of very low residential units, an increase in business park units, and other changes that we'll go through in detail later on in the presentation. But just for the public and the commission, this is a summary of the changes between the two. This table is also available in the staff report, which is online and has been provided to the commission for your review. Okay, so I'll kind of split what's being requested of the city into two groups. The first I'll call base entitlements. So there's a request for a general plan amendment, a specific plan amendment, a development agreement, an overall subdivision, which subdivides the approximately 1,492 acres, and an environmental assessment that was completed in the form of a subsequent EIR. So those are the kind of base entitlements. The next grouping is what I'll call implementing projects. And so there is a request concurrent to the base entitlements to approve six residential planning areas. Those are TTMs 39086 through 39091. We'll go through those in detail later in the presentation. There's also a request for six industrial buildings. Those are DPRs 2406 through 2411 and conditional use permits 2405 through 2410. So those development plan reviews and conditional use permits apply to each industrial building respectively. And then those implementing projects were covered through EA or Environmental Assessment 25-3, which was a consistency checklist determining whether or not subsequent EIR discussed in the base entitlements here covered the implementing projects. So we'll go through that in a moment. So the general plan amendment, we're gonna go one by one through each application. The general plan amendment proposes to modify a number of the figures found in our existing general plan. So if approved, this project would modify the city's land use map, circulation, park and open space plan, trails master plan, alt zone map, evacuation routes. and also update any references within the general plan from the old Mesa Verde Estates title to just the Mesa Verde specific plan title just being proposed and actually was carried over in 2017 as well. So I don't have an example of every single figure that's being proposed to be modified, but I wanted to make sure I touched on two of the most important ones. And so the first is the land use map. And so this is the, on the top of the screen there, is the city's existing general plan land use and zoning map. to the bottom of the screen is the proposed land use map. And the biggest change between the two can be summarized in these two bullet points here, and that is the introduction of approximately four million square feet of industrial uses in the southeast portion of the site. It's difficult to see, but if you were to look at the bottom image on the screen, it's that kind of pink area there within the project boundary. The other main difference being proposed in terms of land use is a reduction in lot sizes and an increase in residential densities, and we'll go through that in detail also later. All right, the second one I wanted to make sure I highlighted for the general plan amendment is the evacuation routes. So if you see the image at the top of the screen, that's the existing evacuation route plan shown in our general plan today. At the bottom, you'll see the proposed evacuation route map, and I'll draw your attention to the bottom photograph. To the left, there's a new arrow going up from kind of the center of the project there, and I'll speak in detail in just a moment, but I wanted to show the commission and public a primary change is this additional evacuation route to the north, and then it's kind of difficult to see, but there are also two new arrows shown south of Sandalwood Drive and going east out to Sandalwood Drive as well. So some new evacuation routes being proposed is the purpose of this slide to show the commission. Saw this on a previous slide, but just to reiterate, this is the existing specific plan land use map. It's what's entitled today for 3,650 residential units at various densities ranging from 4,000 to 10,000 square feet in size, also 250,000 square feet of commercial uses, parks, schools, and water structure. So all you see here are the varying colors of orange, browns, yellows. Those are residential planning areas. Red is commercial. There's no business park or industrial component in the existing land use plan as entitled today. So I wanted to make sure everybody was aware of their entitlements and what they consisted of. So here is the proposed specific plan amendment, land use map, and I'll just toggle that again so you can kind of see if you look towards the bottom right of the slide. Lots of oranges, browns, and yellows towards the bottom. On the proposed, you see pink. That's the industrial business park zone that's being proposed that is adjacent to Sandalwood Drive. And then it's hard to tell on this image, but the densities and lot size, the densities have increased and lot sizes have decreased on this plan compared to the 2017 version. So as an overview of what the specific plan amendment proposes, it's a decrease in low, low-medium, and medium residential units, an increase in medium-high and high-density residential units, an elimination of the very low residential designation, a decrease in mixed use and school acreages, the addition of business park, revisions to the roadway network, there is a revision to county line road access as well. This is the overall tentative track map, TTM 33931. This is the second revision to this map, and as discussed early in the presentation, this proposes to subdivide 1,493 acres into 114 plots. And there are a number of conditions of approval in the staff report attached there for reference that would obligate the applicant to, construct and dedicate a number of public improvements, including roadways, parks and whatnot. And to touch on access before we get into the details of the various project components, this is an important distinction that I want to make sure the Commission and public understands. That is a departure from the earlier iterations of the entitlement packages that were shown. So in 2007 and 2017, County Line Road was emergency access only, meaning 100% of the project traffic had to circulate from Sandalwood Drive. Circulation plan was a little different from what's shown before you. What's here on the screen today is what's shown in the specific plan being proposed this evening. But they were generally consistent. And so the net effect of that was that we had a very, very large cul-de-sac. It's what it was. There was one way in, there was one way out. Everybody had to go through Sandalwood, and in the event of an emergency, there would be a locked gate that the fire department could open to let people out. There were a number of concerns related to that setup, and this proposal undoes the county line road access restrictions that would gate that roadway. So the purpose of this slide and this image is to show you and to say under the current circulation plan for this project, the primary residential access point would be County Line Road, as shown there on the screen at the top, and the primary business park circulation point or access point would be Sandalwood Drive. Now that's not to say that folks that live in the subdivision wouldn't be able to use Sandalwood, that's not accurate to say, But the design and the intention and the project approvals and so forth were designed with this kind of distribution or segregation of trips. So why do that? 2007 and 2017, it was fine then, right? The Planning Commission, the City Council, put forth those restrictions, and I wanted to make sure that I discussed the reasoning why this proposal does not include a locked gate at County Line Road. So those three bullet points here before you are fire history, so these are just in the last 90 days, the Line Fire, which was about 22 acres, the Shore Fire, which was about 3,000 acres, and the Cherry Fire, which was about 89 acres. all burned in very close proximity to the project site. So fire history is a big one. Of course, the devastating 2019 Sandalwood Fire, which burned, I believe it was about 1,000 acres of the project site, and unfortunately there were two lives that were lost in that devastating fire. So fire history is a big, big reason why county line road access is proposed to be free-flowing and not restricted. The second is the very high fire severity zone mapping that was recently released by CAL FIRE. And with the new mapping, the project is located entirely within the very high fire severity zone. And third, just plain old simple good traffic engineering principles, meaning the distribution of trips, reducing dependence on a single outlet, my tongue in cheek characterization of the largest cul-de-sac in history, right? supports emergency response time and is more direct assignment of trips. So rather than somebody that may live in the back of the subdivision having to go from Sandalwood all the way to the back, the assignment of the trips are more directly, more direct so that folks can get to their destination in a more direct way. So all of those bullet points can be summarized in the box there at the bottom. and that's that multiple geographically separated all weather access and evacuation routes are needed. Sandalwood Drive does not cut it as a singular open access point for a project of this magnitude, of this size, and of this consequence to the city. Just to touch again on the fire mapping, I have an image here to show this is the new Cal Fire map. A tremendous amount of the city is located in the very high fire, hazard severity zone, including all, if there may be one small portion there of the project that's in the moderate or high, but it appears to me that the entire project boundary is located in the high hazard severity zone. I also wanted to touch briefly on wildfire mitigation measures and requirements. We'll be talking about Again, very consequential, very large project. We have 3,650 residential units and about four million square feet of industrial uses that are being proposed here this evening. And after giving you some fire history, I thought it would be relevant to talk about the wildfire mitigation measures before we get into all of the project details. So in the subsequent EIR that was provided to the commission, circulated to the public, and in the packet this evening, are a number of wildfire mitigation measures to include wildfire and evacuation education program that would be required in the CC&Rs of the Master HOA would have to administer that program in perpetuity. There are pre-construction requirements, fuel modification zone maintenance and inspections, prohibited plant lists, Potential heli hydrants in later phases of the project subject to the fire chief's direction. That is kind of a new technology, so we're still having internal discussions about whether or not that is a technology that the city is wanting to pursue, but that is kind of built in as an option. And then the emergency access roadway that would be required prior to phase three with the alignment and details subject to the Yucaipa Valley Water District Board review and approval. You might be asking yourself. Why would the Water District have any say over emergency access in the city of Calamesa? Well, I haven't . So here is, if you could please turn your attention to the yellow roadway there shown on the screen. So the red line is the city boundary. Everything below the red line is the city of Calamesa. Everything above the red line is the city of Yucaipa. And what you'll see there is the existing Yucaipa Valley wastewater treatment plant there that is located just north of the project boundary. Part of the environmental analysis and mitigation measures for the project determined that an additional roadway would be required prior to phase three. You see it comes out from the north of the project and heads to the kind of northwest, would ultimately connect to Live Oak Canyon Road and would direct emergency personnel and or residents, depending on phase of the project, through the Yucaipa Valley wastewater treatment plan out to Libo Canyon Road. So this isn't the preferred or first course of action. This would be a true emergency roadway in the instance that County Line Road and Sandalwood Drive, for whatever reason, were incapacitated due to an emergency of some kind, a fire, earthquake, floods, so have you. This would be a northern connection point that would allow emergency ingress and egress. The details of this roadway have not been determined at this time, and this has not been fully approved by the Yucaipa Valley Water District Board of Directors, nor has there been any street design completed. It's very much something that still needs to go through negotiations between the applicant and the Water District, but this is a project requirement that they would need to have in place prior to phase three commencing. I'm happy to answer questions in the Q&A on this. Okay, so that covered quite a bit. Now we're gonna get into implementing projects. So I wanted to provide an exhibit for the Commission and public to understand it's implementing projects. It's a very large project boundary. And so shown there in red, that is the requested geographic area for the residential implementing projects, which are the first six residential planning areas. The request is subdivision of approximately 100 acres into 549 residential lots. One important distinction is that development plan reviews are not included. So development plan review, as the commission knows, includes architecture, site planning, precise grading, landscaping, and so forth. Typically what we see in planning and entitlement world is that the subdivisions will come first and then later, assuming a home builder purchases that tentative track map, the home builders would come in later and process what we call our development time reviews. So it's not a full entitlement at this point in time that's being requested, it's just the subdivision of land. Again, about 100 acres into 500, residential lots, and I'll continue to highlight there in red, the primary access point to those initial residential planning areas would be County Line Road. Not gated, free access to that residential planning area. The second component that's being requested tonight is shown to the bottom of the slide in purple. That is the Business Park area. Full approval is being requested, so this would not come before the Planning Commission or the City Council. assuming that that goes through. So development plan reviews and conditional use permits are being requested tonight and would go forward to city council in the future for six industrial buildings totaling approximately four million square feet on about 223 acres. So again, we've got our base entitlements and then we have implementing projects. So this slide shows you the location of implementing projects in red, shown for the residential, implementing projects for the business park. It's just kind of a more zoomed in view so you can see the orientation and location of the planning areas being requested for subdivision this evening. They are planning areas 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, and 19. And subdivision maps do not lend themselves very well to presentation, so I apologize. But this is for Planning Area 13, tentative track map 39086. This track map, if approved, would subdivide approximately 17 acres into 112 single-family residential lots at a density of about 6.5 dwelling units to the acre within Planning Area 13. And you can see towards the top of the slide, the vicinity map that shows the general location of that proposed subdivision. The next is Planning Area 14 for TTM 39087, which would subdivide approximately 19 acres into 76 single family residential lots at a density of about 3.9 dwelling units per acre within Planning Area 14. And the vicinity map shows the location of that proposed subdivision. Next is for Planning Area 15, Tentative Track Map 39088. This would subdivide approximately 16 acres into 84 single-family residential lots at a density of five dual units to the acre within Planning Area 15. And all of these proposed residential lots are single-family, so there are no multi-family units being proposed at this time. Planning Area 16. TTM, bear with me here, 39089 would subdivide approximately 15.9 acres into 84 single family residential lots at a density of 5.3 dwelling units to the acre within Planning Area 16. Planning Area 18, TTM 39090 would subdivide approximately 10 acres into 60 single family residential lots at a density of 5.6 dwelling units to the acre within Planning Area 18. The final implementing project subdivision map for this evening is planning area 19, tentative track map 39091, which would subdivide approximately 21 acres into 133 single family residential lots at a density of 6.2 dwelling units to the acre planning area 19. So those are all six of the implementing projects for the residential planning area being requested this evening. to our implementing projects for the business park. So these are planning areas two, four, five, six, seven, and eight. The requested actions include approval of six development plan reviews and conditional use permits, as discussed briefly a moment ago, for about four million square feet of warehouse building area. And also, as discussed a moment ago, the primary access point for the business park would be Sandalwood Drive, shown there to the right of the screen. Development plan review for Planning Area 2 is on about 54 acres. This is a request for a 717,230 gross square foot warehouse. All of the details here, but they are shown here on the screen and provided in your staff report back at this evening. It's a number of related site improvements, office space, mezzanine, and so forth. Planning Area 4, it's on about 34 acres. It's a 702,000 square foot gross warehouse building with related site improvements, office space and so forth. We'll say as I flip through the elevations for the business park, they look very similar, but they are not identical. That's intentional. The design of the business park is meant to be cohesive, show some uniformity among the buildings, but not be exactly the same. So the color palette, the massing and so forth, will look familiar but not exactly the same for each building. Okay, Planning Area 5 is on about 35 acres. This is about 700,000 square foot building. They have, again, 14,000 square feet of office space, 128 loading dock doors and related site improvements. Planning Area 6, 35 acres, 717,600 gross square feet. There's a mezzanine for Planning Area 6 proposed, office space, dock doors, related site improvements. Seven, sticking with the design theme once again, this is on about 32 gross acres. This building's a little smaller, 614,300 gross square feet with, again, a mezzanine, office space, and related site improvements. And last but not least, Planning Area 8 on about 27 gross acres. This is 654,400 gross square feet with mezzanine office space, related site improvements, parking, and so forth.

Along with...

The business park, there is a master sign program. There's just some images here that show the various monument signage, wall signage, directional signage, and so forth being proposed as part of the overall sign program. So again, I'll continue to reiterate, this is a large and consequential project, so the commission and public may be interested in the phasing, obviously. a development of this size is not going to be, would not be constructed all at one time. And so this image is the proposed phasing plan. You'll see the gradients, the color gradients, the lightest color, the lighter the color, the earlier the phase. So what I'll call very pale yellow is phase one. Brighter yellow is phase two. And a light tan, I'll call it, is phase three. Orange is phase four. It's phase five, so it's a five-phase project, and this is provided in the staff report. I'll be happy to answer any questions that the commission may have regarding project phasing in the Q&A portion of state parks. So a project of this size that would bring on 3,650 residential units would certainly need to provide some park acreages. So the project includes a proposal for nine parks. Seven of those would be public parks. Two of them would be private HOA recreation centers. And the location of the nine parks are shown in dark green on the image here before you. So I didn't provide all of the conceptual designs. They are available in the specific plan for the public commission if you'd like to take a look. These are just some of the concepts of the public parks being proposed within the project. There's a total of about 50 acres of parks and they include amenities such as baseball fields, basketball courts, sand volleyball courts, potlots, restrooms, shade structures, picnic areas, parking lots, and other amenities. And again, these are representative designs for the public parks. Next we have private parks. So there are two private parks being proposed totaling about 16 acres that include clubhouses, gym and recreation centers, event lawns, dining and catering areas, some family pool, wading pool, spa, basketball court, tot lots, restrooms and so forth. So again, you may be wondering, you get these amenities or when would these parks kind of come online? So I provided this in the staff report, but I also have a slide on it in case during Q&A there are any detailed questions regarding delivery of these parks and the milestones that need to be met. Overall, within the five phase project, there would be one park delivered to the city for phase one, two parks delivered in phase two, three parks delivered in phase three, I'm sorry, two in phase three, two in phase four, and two in phase five. There's also a trails network proposed as part of the project, so the project includes trails, extended pedestrian zones, scenic overlooks, trailheads, and open space areas, as shown on the image in the screen, to provide an amenity to the community. With that, I will pass it over to our city manager that's going to hit the highlights of the development agreement.

Thank you, Kelly. Good evening, Commissioner, members of the public. So before we get into the details on the development agreement, I just wanted to kind of give an overview of what a development agreement is. I think the commission's probably well aware of that, but just for the edification of the public. So a developer agreement is a voluntary contract between a city and a property owner or developer. So unlike a typical land use entitlement, which establishes what development is permitted, a development agreement allows the city and the developer to negotiate additional terms governing how the project will proceed over time. So there's value to both parties. For the developer, the principal benefit is certainty. So as Kelly mentioned, large projects like this one take many years and require substantial investment before construction is complete. Development agreement can provide greater assurance that the land use rules, permitted uses, development standards, and other agreed upon rights will remain in place during the term of the agreement even as regulations may otherwise change. For the city, the benefit is also certainty but in a different way. The city can obtain binding commitments regarding matters such as infrastructure improvements, funding obligations, public benefits, project phasing, timing, maintenance responsibilities or other conditions that might not otherwise be secured through the normal entitlement process. So those commitments can remain enforceable for the life of the agreement. So in this case, our term for this development agreement is 15 years. The developer has two available extensions but must meet certain milestones to be eligible for those extensions. So the first one, the developer must have paid at least $3 million of development impact fees and designed at least 10 acres of parks and either been issued building permits for at least 750 residential units or building permits for at least two industrial buildings. For the second extension, they must have been issued an additional 750 residential units for building permits or at least one additional industrial building. There's a number of prepayments of development impact fees that would come into the city ahead of development. $3 million in government, general government facilities fees payable within the first 18 months following the effective date or issuance of the first grading permit, whichever happens first. and also 15 million dollars in street and traffic fees payable at the time shown on the screen so to keep in mind remember the street and traffic diff must be used to construct construct additional capacity whether that's enhancing the existing road or building a new road the roadway must be in the city's nexus study to be eligible for funding next slide please So the project is required to do a number of off-site improvements, including improvements along County Land Road, as Kelly had mentioned, from West County Land Lane to the project boundary. Those will be done in the existing right-of-way. They are also required to construct an emergency access route that Kelly talked about to Live Oak Canyon. The applicant is required to build the ultimate interchange at Sandalwood and Interstate 10. So as part of these improvements, the applicant will likely enter into a TUMF credit agreement since the Sandalwood interchange is a TUMF eligible roadway, TUMF being the Transportation Uniform Mitigation Fee administered by the Western Riverside County Council of Governments. The credits, however, will not cover the entire cost and the applicant will pay for the cost of improvements over and above their TUMF credit. Finally, the applicant will be required to contribute to both interim and ultimate improvements at the county line road interchange. For interim improvements, they will contribute to the traffic signals and related improvements that will be happening in the near future. So they have those temporary signals there now. The plans are being finalized for permanent signals and additional modifications to the interchange to improve traffic flow. Next slide. The project will be providing a number of community benefits. So the first is a development agreement contribution, which is $500,000 paid in three increments. As I mentioned earlier, extensions to the development agreement will be subject to an extension contribution of $125,000 each. They don't get those automatically. They have to meet those milestones and pay that additional fee. There will be a residential contribution for each unit built to be paid at building permit. Those will range from $500 to $7 each. There's a business park community benefit contribution, and those will be paid as a certificate of occupancy rather than building permit. And the fee for that is $1.50 per square foot of building. And keep in mind, we're talking about up to 4.2 million square feet being proposed. Next slide. Planning area three is part of the business park area, but has been carved out for potential medical, educational, or professional use. And so the developers are required to use their best efforts to secure those uses. So think medical offices, medical labs, trade schools, that kind of thing. To incentivize those uses, the CBC would be waived if those types of uses ultimately end up there and that use remains for at least five years. But if there is no user and the planning area gets built as industrial, any building there would be subject to a $3 per square foot CBC rather than $1.50. A $3 million contribution to parks and open space will also be made no later than the second industrial certificate of occupancy. And this is not a prepayment nor is a credit towards parkland development impact fees. This is an over and above those obligations. The city recently submitted an earmark for $4 million to the federal government through Congressman Calvert for improvements along Callum Mason Boulevard. So to add to that potential investment, this project will contribute $250,000, which will be on top of that $4 million should the earmark be secured for a welcome sign along Callum Mason Boulevard. Next slide. um another community benefit is the dedication of 5.3 acres of land for public use the city has not determined how that would be used yet but it could be used for public works yard perhaps a fire station a community center it is at the city's discretion but it will be deed restricted for some type of public use finally or excuse me um There's a number of maintenance requirements that will be required of the development. I'm sorry, I'm gonna go to the, I have my notes mixed up here. The development agreement also specifies that the applicant or its successor, such an HOA, would be responsible for maintenance of certain public improvements. The details of who would be responsible for that can be found in table 7-2 of the proposed amended specific plan. The development will be required to annex into CFD 1. So CFD 1 was created in 2006 to provide supplemental funding for police, fire, and park maintenance. So all new developments since that time have annexed into CFD 1. That includes JP Ranch. Singleton Heights and Summer Wind. And the goal of the CFD is to ensure that there is an additional revenue stream to support the additional burdens that new development brings on those functions to ensure that service levels are maintained for existing residents. And then finally, the applicant will be required to contribute to the construction of a bridge over Gardner Watch, which would connect to future Roberts Road. So this would connect the project to Summer Wind. And then at this point, I will turn it back over to Kelly.

So that was a lot of information, and we covered quite a few entitlement requests, all of which were analyzed within the two environmental documents that are for you this evening. The first is for Environmental Assessment 23-02. These cover those base entitlements we talked about, so that general plan amendment, the specific plan amendment, the DA, that tentative map are all covered by the subsequent EIR and the state clearing house number is there if you'd like to get additional information on the EIR. Of course it's also available on the city website and linked in the packet. So just as a way of summary for the subsequent EIR, in accordance with the requirements of CEQA and the state CEQA guidelines, an environmental assessment was prepared to determine the project might have any potentially significant adverse impacts on the environment. A notice of preparation was circulated from May 10th, 2024 to June 10th, 2024. Scoping meeting for the SEIR was held on May 30th, 2024. Notice of availability was circulated from July 11th, 2025 to August 25th, 2025. Numerous comments were received during the comment period from public, private, and tribal entities as well as individuals. Responses to each comment received are included in the final SEIR. After analysis was completed and all feasible mitigation was incorporated, the project was found to result in less than significant impacts in all areas with the exception of aesthetics, air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, and noise. Each of those resource areas will have a significant and unavoidable impact to the environment. The draft and final EIR, the mitigation monitoring reporting program, MMRP, and the findings of fact statement of overriding considerations are included in the packet for the Commission's consideration. call it an environmental document. It's the consistency checklist that was prepared under environmental assessment 25-3. What this does is it's kind of what I'll call a look back document for those implementing projects. So in accordance with the requirements of CEQA and the state CEQA guidelines, a consistency checklist was prepared to evaluate whether the potential environmental effects of those 12 implementing projects were adequately addressed in the subsequent EIR. As analyzed in the checklist, there are no peculiar circumstances applicable to the implementing projects that were not addressed in the SEIR. So those implementing projects may rely on the SEIR without additional CEQA analysis. It's an old slide from an old project, please ignore it. And I'll pass it back over to Will for some fiscal impact information. All right, thank you, Kelly.

So we'll start by looking at one-time revenues first in the form of development impact fees. So these are all based on today's rates, which were set back in 2017. So the project would generate just under $80 million in development impact fees. So that doesn't mean that the developer would pay $80 million if some improvements come in lieu of as credits and little payments so for example parks on the park the parks that Kelly had had mentioned all the ones that are open to the public or real are diff eligible or diff credit eligible so those parks will likely exceed their obligation in terms of cost versus the amount of obligation so we won't be actually probably taking any payment under parks, at least at today's rates, depending on what the rates look like when we do our DIF study. So we are undergoing a DIF study to update our fees, and the project is not subject to any rate lock, so the developer would pay whatever the rate is at the time of building permit issuance. So if you go to the next slide. The city is not the only agency that charges DIFs. The school district and water district also collect development fees. We're also within two regional fee programs, the TUMF and MSHCP programs. For the TUMF, the obligation will most likely be eaten up by the aforementioned Sandalwood interchange improvements. The very preliminary estimates put the improvements at well above the TUMF obligation for the project. Some of YBWD's fees will also come in the form of credits for infrastructure that the project will be building as part of their development. So when I say they get credits, again, they're still spending money. It's just they're providing those improvements rather than paying a diff itself. and the credits are on a dollar for dollar basis. So if it costs a million dollars to build something, they'll get a million dollar credit against that diff obligation.

So next slide.

So if we roll up the city diff and various community benefit contributions, we're looking at just over $90 million in investments into the community from a combination of cash payments and public improvements, including over $12 million in community benefit contributions. This does not, however, include the value of that 5.3 acres of land being dedicated to the city. Obviously there's value of that, but it's hard to put that into dollars without an appraisal. So we didn't want to put a dollar amount to that, but there is value in that as well that's not included here. So going to the next slide here. So one important question we need to ask is on a perpetual basis, on an ongoing basis, what is the project going to bring in and what is it going to cost to provide services? So I do want to preface it that it's slightly different than the fiscal impact section in the staff report, as I'm pulling in all costs and associated with CFD1. So the staff report only covered general fund impacts. So we'll start with direct revenues, those generated by the project itself. This primarily comes in the form of property taxes. So assuming that the project reaches build up at 15 years, remember the term of the D is 15 years, that's the expected planning horizon. For the term of the development agreement, the project will generate about $14 million in property taxes. Those are the first three lines added together. Other revenues, including franchise fees and sales tax generated by the commercial development, and these are specific to sales that are coming from people coming from the outside to in. We do generate a good amount of sales tax for people that are traveling on Line 10, for example. That gets us to a total of about $15 million. I do want to note on here before we move on to the next slide that the industrial buildings do not generate sales tax themselves. So for example, an e-commerce fulfillment center would provide that to just kind of give you a specific, I can't give any specific numbers, but just to give you kind of an idea of scale. As most of you probably know, the city of Beaumont has a couple of fulfillment centers and when those went into operation, their sales tax, their citywide sales tax went from $8 million annually to $28 million annually. But because those are few and far between and there's no guarantee to get those, we would not want to project any type of sales tax in that. So this does not include anything of the sort. So that would be additive if that were to be a tenant in one of these buildings. Next slide, okay. so there's also direct indirect sales tax that are generated as a result of the development so as new residents come in new employees come in they will shop in town for certain things and that generates additional sales tax but i did want to be careful and also some tot but i did want to be careful to separate that out from direct so we can kind of analyze those separately and because Direct revenues are easier to forecast than indirect. We're taking a very conservative approach when forecasting indirect revenues. And I mentioned earlier that the development will also annex into CFD1. So CFD1 rates grow at the rate of inflation. So using the current rates and extrapolating the rates into the future, using the same figures we use for inflation for on the expenditure side, which we'll look at next, the development will generate about $5.4 million per year at a 15 year build out. So that's on top of the revenues that we saw on the previous slide. Next slide. So obviously, again, as I mentioned before, we've seen what the project brings in, so let's look at the impact it has on services. So the project is expected to cost about $11.7 million annually at the 15-year mark. That assumption does, we do have some economies of scale as we grow. For example, even, you know, whether we, how we are, the size we are today or in the future, we'll have one city manager, one community development director, one finance director, et cetera. So there's administrative spaces that won't have, you don't have to add additional people for every, you know, so many residents you add. So as we grow, the percentage of our budget going to administration would shrink. So there's one big exception to this. On the police and fire side, it's a one-to-one growth. So we don't actually reduce it for any kind of scale. We assume that whatever it's costing per resident today is gonna be what it's gonna cost per resident in the future, obviously adjusted for inflation. On the fire side, we can expect some economies to scale, because again, there's administrative costs associated with having our own fire department. On the sheriff's side, that approach really does make sense, because all administrative costs are captured in the hourly cost of a deputy. So the way we pay for sheriff's services, it really does probably scale with that most closely. And you'll note on the commercial and industrial side, the cost burdens are lower. So I had specific conversations with our previous captain, and he had worked in Moreno Valley, and obviously Moreno Valley has a number of industrial buildings there. And they said the industrial developments generate very low call volumes when it comes to deputies. So that means the cost, when I look at police services costing around just under $500,000, I'm focusing that mostly on the commercial side and maybe also provision for some commercial enforcement as well. But I think even that might be on the conservative side. But again, when we go to the next slide, that'll become an important factor as you look at the net fiscal impact. So next slide, please. So this is kind of bringing those previous slides together. The direct revenues, the indirect revenues, the CFD1 revenues, and then looking at those against expenditures. And you can see there's quite a bit of bush. And again, so these are all inflation adjusted figures 15 years into the future. So with an ongoing net positive fiscal impact of about $9.8 million, there is room for growth that would benefit existing residents. So that money could be used to invest in additional public safety, road repairs, additional community programs, other investments in our community. And this is to me the most important test because in order to recommend, I'm looking at it from a dollars and cents perspective, one thing we need to make sure of is that there is a net positive impact. And not just a net positive impact, which means that the development provides additional benefits to the community, but it should be a healthy amount. It should be a good buffer. because these are projections, right? Revenues may not be as high as expected, expenditures may be higher than expected, so having a healthy buffer is very important as we analyze all of this. So with that, I'm gonna hand it back to Kelly to wrap it up.

Okay, thank you, Will. So that concludes the staff presentation. There are a number of recommendations here on the slide before you, and it actually, carries over to a second slide, so I will not be reading the entire recommended actions. I'll leave that for somebody else, but with that, I open it up for any questions that the commission may have, and also the applicant does have a presentation to give.

Before we get to that, I need to make a comment that I have met with the developer on Zoom, and has anybody else had an opportunity to?

I, too, received a briefing via Zoom.

OK. All right. With that, we'll bring the developer up.

Mr. Chair, you'll need to open the public hearing. Oh, it's me.

Thank you. Good evening, Chair Barron and fellow commissioners. I'm Bill Shopoff, President and CEO of Shopoff Realty Investments, and I'm joined here this evening with David Graves, our Vice President of Development, along with a number of members of our consulting team who will be available for answering questions as we move through the evening. Thank you for the opportunity to present Mesa Verde. Today we will walk through reimagining of this 1,463-acre master plan community and explore the many benefits it will bring to Cala Mesa. And I'm not going to go into some of the granular details. City staff just did a great job, and so I'm going to cover different items here and more briefly. I think one of these things is brief is good sometimes. As many of you know, this project's been planned for many years. It was previously approved, as we saw the history, actually, by the county of Riverside and the city of Cala Mesa under a different ownership group. What we're proposing today, working with city staff, builds upon the original vision and updates it to better reflect the needs of Cala Mesa and the consumer today. The revised plan creates a more balanced master plan community with 3,650 homes, parks and open space, commercial and retail services, employment opportunities, and significant investments in community infrastructure. It also introduces a broad range of housing opportunities, including affordable rental housing, market rate rental housing, smaller lot-for-sale homes that creates more attainable pathways for homeownership. The positive economic impact will be substantial. As we saw, we just, you know, generating almost $10 million of annual positive impact. And I want to note, just over half of that net is out of the addition of the commercial space to the project. But additionally, the project is about 684 million in total economic output and more than 5,300 jobs that build out in stabilization. So it'll create that jobs-housing balance that so many communities are looking for. The project will provide for seven public parks, two private parks we talked about, and preserve more than 490 acres of open space. Slide three now, David. Sorry, we're going to try to manage this. At its core, Mesa Verde is envisioned as a place where residents can live, work, play, and connect through a thoughtfully planned community environment. The community is designed around interconnected neighborhoods, parks, trails, open space, and activity-focused gathering places that encourage an active lifestyle and bring people together. Every element has been planned with the goal of creating a community that serves the residents while contributing to the long-term success of Cala Mesa. Next few slides we're gonna cover some renderings representing the vision for Mesa Verde, the quality of the community that we'll create throughout this project. First we have a couple of examples of some of the residential product that's being envisioned for here. As Kelly said, that'll come back for a later specific project as we work through with home builders and they'll have their ideas about what they want to actually bring forth. Potential community pool and clubhouse envisioned here. Next slide, David, is proposed community amphitheater that could host various community events, not just for the residents of Mesa Verde, but for the community at large. We've got a sports facility with both soccer and baseball fields contemplated. And finally, here's an example of just one of the neighborhood public parks. I think Kelly probably covered this pretty well, but this shows the overall land use plan with residential neighborhoods, schools, parks, open space, commercial uses, and employment opportunities thoughtfully integrated throughout the project. As you can see, we kept the commercial towards I-10 and towards the southerly part of the project and really took the residential footprint and moved that up into what I call the northwesterly part of the project. One of the key things here is under current state land use, for us to add the commercial, we had to keep the same number of residential units under SB 330. conscientious of that and thoughtful of it. But it wasn't just to make more units in a smaller space. It's all about getting to a level of affordability. When this project was done 10 years ago, there was a thought that people could afford large lots. The problem is, is infrastructure in that large lot and building a big home on it today, those would be over a million dollars, and there's only so many of those we could sell. So it's a little bit of a challenge here. Even at this, with interest rates where they are, affordability is a key issue for all of us. Next project, next one. Briefly walk through some of the key elements that will make up the community. This is an example of one of the residential planning areas. As we said, there's 3,650 residential units. There are 2,500 to 5,000 square foot lots, neighborhood parks, two points of access to the freeway through Sandalwood and County Line Road, access to community parks maintained by the Mesa Verde HOA, and then open space areas maintained by a conservancy. And a little more on the residential single family homes envisioned with several product types, including detached single family homes, likely have some town homes, some courtyard homes, and then some multifamily product as well. That's a great thing. With direct access to the I-10 corridor, this location is well suited for a large range of employment generating uses. while also creating a new source of long-term revenue for the city. Just as important, a pump track, apparently that's bikes and skateboards, if you don't know, which I didn't know. I'm a bicycle rider, but I don't do that kind of bicycle riding. Private HOA parks, recreation areas, and clubhouse, and we have pocket parks in each of the residential areas. And public parks are project-funded maintenance, so that does not add a burden to the city. This is a couple renderings of the commercial and retail. We have a space that we're holding out for a medical office or educational. Additionally, we have a space for a big box or large box retail. Think Costco or something similar to that. And then we've got five acres dedicated for restaurants and resident serving services. I'll go over the project itself. I want to talk about the highlights of Mesa Verily. bring to Cala Mesa, and some of this is gonna be a little bit redundant, but we'll try to keep it quick. We've been intentional in designing a project that delivers meaningful, long-term value, and I think some of that is the amphitheater, places for community events, the public parks. The other is this traffic improvements. We were thoughtful about it in including improved traffic circulation around the schools. We added this separated bike lane. As a cyclist myself who's had a couple of conflicts with cars, that's an easy one to sell me on because keeping bicycles away from cars is a pretty good thing. I've had a couple spills over the years, and my wife can attest to that, having gotten a couple of ER calls. But I think, you know, also the upgrades to Sandalwood, the interchange at Sandalwood and I-10, the improvements we're going to do to County Line Road, including some I-10 interchange improvements, and also making fair share funding contributions to the Robert Roads bridge connection down to the Summerwind community. Conservation, roughly a third of the property, more than 490 acres will remain as open space. More than 300 acres will be permanently protected along with preservation of key natural and aquatic resources throughout the site. We believe preserving these areas will help maintain the character of the property while creating a better overall community. We're working with Western Riverside MHCP and there'll be land conveyed to the RCA as part of that. Beyond the amenities we've discussed, Mesa Verde includes substantial investments in infrastructure and public safety that'll both support existing and future residents. As I've outlined here, and I'm not gonna read all of these, but we've got obviously significant new improvements to water, sewer, recycled water systems, major roadway improvements, enhanced connectivity, And as Kelly very elegantly talked about, significant fire protection measures with both the open access to County Line Road and then adding the emergency access through Yucaipa Valley's property. Working closely with local agencies, we've incorporated fuel modification zones, dedicated emergency vehicle access, and other wildfire resiliency features. Candidly reflect the realities of planning in Southern California today. The project also includes the five-acre land dedication that could support future public facilities, including possibly a fire station or public works facility. Compared to the previous approvals, the plan provides a stronger conservation measures, enhanced fire protection, improved roadway infrastructure and connectivity, better jobs, housing balance, and a broader range of housing opportunities. expanded community amenities and recreational opportunities while preserving those key natural resources throughout the site. These enhancements reflect what we've learned over the years and create a plan that is better aligned with the needs of Cala Mesa today and for the future. I'd like to put into perspective the scale of investments associated with the Mesa Verde. Infrastructure's about a billion dollars. Construction, about 3.42 billion of economic impact. Residential will be about 900 million. Business park itself is about 420. Talking about the net revenues into the general fund, we've already covered that. Parks and trails I've covered. And then obviously school fees, city fees, and fees to some of the other service providers. I think, David, we're at the end here? Staying on time, so. Commissioners, I want to thank you for your time and consideration today. We believe Mesa Verde represents a thoughtful evolution of a long-planned community, one that responds to the needs of Cala Mesa today while helping prepare for the future. Throughout this process, our goal has been simple, create a project that is thoughtfully planned, economically viable, and capable of delivering meaningful benefits to Cala Mesa for years to come. like to thank city staff and our agency partners for those who work collaboratively with us throughout the project sometimes we were all pulling our hair out i don't have much to do but i'm still doing it but uh we got here short four years i think of working on this i want to thank our consultants as well who've gotten this through But you're working with Yucaipa, Cala Mesa Joint Unified School District, Yucaipa Valley Water District, Fire Department, Regional Conservation Authority, Caltrans, Southern California, Edison, and many others. Additionally, I'd like to specifically thank Cala Mesa Chamber of Commerce for their support, as well as I'd like to thank Labor, who's showing up tonight. We have an agreement with Labor and tend to use them wisely, and we've been able to do that on other projects, and we're very excited to have them here tonight. So what I'm asking tonight is hopefully for an affirmative vote for the project we bought from before you. My team is here available for questions. We've got consultants if they're outside of David's or my purview. Thank you.

Thank you.

OK. Before I go on, I should read this here, right? It's the notice.

Yes, Mr. Chair, you'll need to read about the public comment portion of the hearing.

All right. Let's see, this is an opportunity, this is for the speakers. This is an opportunity for members of the public to address the planning commission on the items on tonight's agenda that's within the commission's subject matter jurisdiction as well as any items on the consent calendar. I guess that would have been read earlier, huh? If you wish to speak, please come forward to the podium and if you're joining us remotely via Zoom, click the raise hand button and if you're participating by phone, please press nine to raise your hand. We will take the comments from the, those in chambers first, followed by those participating remotely. And remember that you only have three minutes speaking time, please. And Madam Secretary, do we have any public comments?

Mr. Chair, one of the commissioners needed to leave the dais for a minute, if you don't mind waiting. All right.

Do we want to call for a brief recess?

Call for a brief recess?

Yes, that's fine.

Five minutes?

Five minutes sounds good.

Three minutes is good. When I see the red light I'll say something.

There we go, yeah. Let the record show that it's time is now 718 and we'll call the meeting back to order. And that goes back to Madam Secretary. Do we have public comments?

I have received a number of comments and just as a reminder of those that are participating online, please raise your hand if you would like to speak. And we will call it on you once the speakers that are present tonight have spoken. Just a quick mention, we have received some comments that are part of the administrative record from Clarence Hofer, Jonathan Beatty, Juan Buenolos, Water Regional Board, SoCalGas, Steven Papertorn, Susie Willis, Tossetti. And then there is a couple of letters in front of you tonight that we received today after publication that will be recorded into the administrative notes for tonight's meeting from Zarin and Sasha Hofer. And with that, I will begin calling. Luis Lopez.

Thank you so much. Good evening, chair, commissioners, staff, community. My name is Louie Lopez. I'm a business agent for the Ironworkers Local 433. Great presentation, Kelly, that was good. I'm going to use an example tonight because it's kind of a story that I lived through too after serving our country with two tours. I have an apprentice back here. I got a phone call one day from one of our members. He said, Louie, I got a cousin that just came back from serving the country, combat army veteran. I said, okay, well, he's coming from Texas and doesn't know where to really land. Can we get him in? And the beautiful thing about projects like this is we need projects like this to bring men and women that served our country proudly As some of us back here did, I know I did. But this is, I was thinking back there, man, this is such a great project. Because a lot of people think these are just part-time jobs. They're not. And we're not cheap labor, because our first period apprentices start out somewhere around $30 an hour. Okay, so I give props to the developer who ahead of time says, hey, I will use skilled and trade labor. It's like us going to a college. It's like any one of you sending your kids to college. You know what I mean? You expect to come out making good wages. That's what our apprenticeship program is. I got my veteran here that's in his first year. And looking at this project, I was like, wow, this is an opportunity for a man that served our country to start his career probably work his whole apprenticeship on one project, and not only that, can you imagine him buying a home? That's a dream I have. And that's what many of our trades, our representatives, that's what we want for our families. Because that's why we went through the apprenticeship, and that's why we continue to get out and make relationships and share with people what our skilled and trained labor is. And it's just like going to a college. It's not a part-time job. It's like any doctor that went through school. He has to do an internship. He has to get some on-the-job training. So every project does matter. And a project this size matters. Man, I look forward to putting some men and women, not only coming back from serving our country. Where's my time? You know, I'm very open. I get a lot of men and women that have made mistakes. I'm pretty sure I know I've made some mistakes. But because of hiring systems, it discounts them from being able to be hired due to a record. That's something beautiful about the trades. We offer a second chance. And a job, a good paying job, a good paying career matters. So on behalf of the Ironworkers Local 433, I ask this commission to unanimously vote and move this to the city council. Thank you.

Thank you for your service.

Thank you.

Amy Smith.

Good evening. My name is Amy Smith and I'm a representative here on behalf of the Californians allied for a responsible economy otherwise known as Care California. We're here today to voice our strong support of this project and to ask for the Commission's yes votes tonight. Cali Mesa deserves to have positive community growth and economic impacts. The benefits from this development will create positive economic growth through good paying jobs and will serve to strengthen both the community and Southern California as a whole. This specific plan sets a clear and strong vision for the future of the city. And most importantly, it's a piece that will show growth and development, not just for a year, not just for a few years, but we're talking decades down the line. It's a vision of what your future is going to look like. And I like it. It's a beautiful future. Because of this and so much more, we ask that you support this project to bring the city, the county, and the state of California into a beautiful and progressive future. Thank you.

Thank you.

I think it says Johnny Escobedo.

Good evening, commissioners, Kelly Mesa residents. My name is Johnny Escobedo. I'm here on behalf of Ironworkers Local 416 to express our support for the project and ask for a yes support tonight. Building a project such as this one creates jobs and builds stronger and better communities from day one. The developer has committed to local hire and will put hundreds of men and women just like me to work, earning fair wages and safeguarding our children's and families' future. One of the things about the trade commissioners is that when I was in the field myself for 27 years, we would drive half an hour, 20 minutes, and we'd be at the job site. Now we have members from Riverside County from all the surrounding counties around here, from Banning, driving all the way down to downtown LA to be able to support their families. They're missing out on watching their children go to ball games, their daughters going to dance recitals, and just spending quality time with the families. A yes on this project will give our members and future members that ability to spend time with their families and allow us to enjoy what we work for, a betterment of our future of our family. We ask for your support in this project, a yes vote, thank you.

Thank you.

David Moore.

Good evening, Chair and Commissioner. My name is David Moore. I'm a proud member of La Una. I'm here today in strong support of this project. This project represents an opportunity to create good-paying construction union jobs for our brothers and sisters and provide economic benefits for the community as a whole. This project gives our members an opportunity to work close to home and not having to travel hours away being away from their families. I respectfully ask you approve this project. Thank you. CHRIS JERRAMSEN. Thank you.

CHRISTIE WOOD. Cesar Lamos.

Good evening, Chair, Vice Chair, Commissioners, staff. My name is Cesar Lamas. I am a nine-year active and proud member from the Labor's International Union in North America. i'm also coming on behalf of as a representative for some of the brothers and sisters from different trades that can't be here today because they're essentially out of the county trying to provide food for their families and essentially put some sort of roof on their on their head for the whole concept of working outside of the county that's i think the biggest battle it's like an uphill battle right now uh kind of landing workers uh work for workers to be a little bit closer to home That's essentially kind of the biggest fight that I got for everybody that I'm representing for right now. One of my closest buddies, he lives out in Yucaipa, and he's driving to LA right now. And he's going through that process, just like how Louis said, just like how Johnny said. Not only that, but you're also kind of providing these type of jobs. It's a huge job, right? It's a huge job. Not only is it going to be essentially someone's retirement for this project, it's also going to be the beginning of someone's career. two months of community college, and I kind of just said, I don't think this is it. And I jumped straight into the trades and decided that this is going to be it. This is going to be a career where I get to essentially put my hands on and, you know, put my thought and effort into something else. And it provided me, essentially, I was able to purchase my mom's house. I was able to kind of take care of my younger brothers and kind of teach them that this is the way, essentially, that There is more to it than just essentially being part of a union member. It's providing for a family. It's providing for essentially a household. So hopefully you can approve the specific plan amendment. Thank you. CHRIS JERRAM, Thank you.

CHRISTIE WOOD, Susie Wills.

I'm Susie Wills. I live on West County 9 Road 801. My family moved there November 1957. I'm here because our residents are very upset about the possibility of our road being widened to 60 feet. This is a rural road. There are about two dozen families that live on this road. This is the last rural road in Cala Mesa. Now they're talking about widening it to 60 feet. Some of the people, the road's going to come up almost to their front door. And with the traffic, and this was supposed to be an emergency road. And now apparently it's going to be one of the main ingress. So this is the difference. This is how many cars are going to be going up and down our road every day. This is the increase. You're the developer.

This is the increase for our new- Ma'am, could you please address the commission and not the, thank you.

It's a little bit more than what you guys agreed to, but if every house has two cars, each car goes back and forth to work every day, and then say they're in sports or go to the grocery store just once, that many trips. almost 60,000 trips a day. Can you imagine living on that road? I mean, it's already really hard for us to get underneath the underpass because they haven't gotten the traffic lights timed the right way. A lot of you probably sit there under the underpass and watch people, watch the trucks get off the freeway and try and make a left-hand turn. The warehouse isn't open yet. And that was kind of a surprise. It's like, oh, warehouse. They didn't have to tell us, because we're Riverside County, not San Bernardino County, and we were more than 300 feet away. And I was told that they were expecting up to 1,000 vehicles a day at the warehouse when it is working. So then add that 1,000 vehicles to the vehicles, not just the construction vehicles, because there's going to be construction before those houses are built. There's going to be a lot of construction traffic. So there's got to be another way. another a few more minutes seconds there's got to be another way to get to use besides county line red thank you thank you clarence hofer

Good evening Planning Commissioners. My name is Clarence Hofer. I live and own properties at both 856 and 870 West County Line Road. I'm here tonight to voice my strong opposition to Amendment 2. What we are seeing tonight is a complete about face from the 2017 approval. In 2017, West County Line Road was explicitly stated to be emergency access only. Now the developer wants to pull a bait and switch, funneling their commercial business park traffic onto Sandalwood and dumping thousands of residential commuter cars right onto our narrow rural residential doorsteps. This is a blatant misuse of fire safety as a pretext to optimize their internal profits at the expense of existing residents. The physical reality on the ground, what the consultant's computer models completely ignores at West County Land Road is less than 30 feet wide. It's generally 24 feet wide now. The general plan calls for a 60 foot wide roadway with a 48 foot wide paved curb to curb street and sidewalks. If the road is expanded into the city 60 foot right away, it will violate the intent of the city's established 30 foot minimum setback protections bringing the traffic noise and pollution and safety hazards generated by the thousands of cars a day dangerously close to many homes front door. This devalues our properties, destroys our land use compatibility, The city cannot legally force existing third-party properties into zoning noncompliance without facing immense liability. More egregiously, Dudek's SCIR contains zero analysis regarding private property access safety. This area is zoned rural residential. We legally own, operate, and store RVs, horse trailers, and such on our land. Right now, we depend on a quiet nature of a 30-foot rural road to swing wide and back into our driveways. If you replace that shoulder with a concrete curb, sidewalk, and active traffic lanes, our turning radius is physically gone. Trying to back a 35-foot trailer across active lanes handling thousands of cars a day is a catastrophic safety hazard. The SEIR completely fails to address how existing residents are supposed to safely access their own driveways. Under CEQA, a failure to analyze design features that substantially increase hazards is a fatal flaw. Don't let the constituents hide behind regional vehicle miles travel data to minimize this disaster. Their own data provider, Urban Crossroads, admits in their traffic analysis, appendix J2 on page 11, that this project generates 60,090 total daily trips, with the residential portion contributing over 32,000 trips. Worse, this study completely ignores the cumulative reality of newly built Yucaipa Logistics Center, which was previously estimated to have over 1,000 diesel trucks a day. The staggering amount of traffic will create gridlock, chaos, and choke emergency services and evacuation routes. We are not opposed to the emergency access only usage of West County Line as previously approved, but we are completely opposed to the chaos being presented to us by utilizing West County Line Road as primary access. I urge the Commission to deny Amendment 2 and hold this developer to the 2017 approval and keep West County Line gated for emergency access. Thank you.

Thank you.

Travis Feenstra.

Good evening, Commission. My name is Travis Feenstra. I live on 878 West County Line Road. I urge the Commission, do not accept this proposal. I would recommend sending it back and having the true environmental impact on County Line Road They didn't even look at how do we get access to our houses with 60 feet of road going through our roadway. The environmental impact itself said that there are things that they cannot, unavoidable impacts for greenhouse gas emissions, offsite traffic noise, and the cumulative impact of scenic views and visual character. These findings should matter to you. It matters to the community. In 2017, we came with a rural, look at our logo. Look at what's on your patch. Remember who you are. That's not what was presented here tonight. We need Cala Mesa to stay Cala Mesa. We love Cala Mesa. The proposed thing that talked about County Land Road access was glossed over. There's 21 families that live on that road with little kids. I have orange trees. My kids have a swing in the oak tree. This is not a small thing. And this is access that's just going to get bulldozed over. We're not opposed to... a land developer using their land, economic growth. We want jobs. We're not opposed to that. But you don't have to do it on the shoulders of your current residents. I urge you to think about the people who live here currently, and is this going to be good for the city of Calamason? Not just dollars and cents, but good for the city. The impact on the city traffic-wise, we're not going to be able to get off the highway onto our roads. And although we may have some money in our budget, we aren't going to be able to get to our house or use the land. We want to see the land use pattern and the lower distancing character that was before. And there's also access that can be had to the north. We know it can be emergency. We turn County Line Road into primary now. We can turn that access to the north to primary. There's no current landowners through there, Yucaipa Valley Water District. Let's see a plan from that. I think that that would be a very good thing to look forward to. I urge you to reject it and ask them to look for alternate access points.

CHRIS JERRAMSEN.

Thank you.

CHRISTIE WOOD. Sarah Lintocetti.

Hello, my name is Sarah Lynn Tassetti. I reside at 780 West County Line Road. I've lived there for 23 years. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm here to speak for the residents of West County Line Road, especially a couple elderly ladies who were unable to get out of their home and don't know how to access the computer system to be here tonight, and the rural neighborhoods that could be profoundly affected by the Mesa Verde specific plan. I ask that these concerns be included in the meeting minutes. This proposal calls for 3,650 homes on just 474.6 acres. Yes, the project footprint has been reduced by approximately 36%, but the number of homes has not been reduced whatsoever. That means more homes, more density, more traffic, and the pressure on the surrounding community. One of our greatest concerns is West County Line Road. It is expected to become one of only two major collector roads serving this enormous development. Yet we still do not have a clear picture of what exactly is going to happen to this road. There's been no real transparency regarding this. The map that was mailed out to us initially doesn't even highlight County Line Road giving the illusion that it is not going to be affected so when is the plan to for this road to be widened which property is going to be taken what was going to happen to the existing driveways homes horse properties what about pedestrian safety and the years of construction impacts these are not minor questions these are questions that directly affect people's homes and their quality of life West County Line Road is more than a road. It's a rural community. It has larger lots, horses, agricultural properties, mature trees, open space, and neighbors who chose Cala Mesa because they wanted a rural way of life. That was their choice. That's why they purchased on West County Line Road. We cannot simply surround these neighborhoods with high density development and expect nothing to change. If this project moves forward, the city must require meaningful buffers and transitions. And for residents whose properties are directly impacted, developers should be required to offer voluntary fair market buyout options and appropriate compensation. During the 2019 Sandalwood fire, we saw firsthand how limited our evacuation routes are. We saw the challenges facing the middle school and the mobile harm park. Now we're being asked to add 3,650 more homes onto the same two roads with the new additional evacuation route leading to Live Oak. I have to ask, when the next wildfire comes, will we have enough roads to get people safely out? I beg to say no. I come from paradise. This is not enough. It's not safe. I would like to ask, please do not approve a project of this magnitude until traffic, evacuation, property impacts, and neighborhood protections are fully addressed. Cala Mesa can grow, but growth should never come at the expense of the safety and quality of life of the people who already live here. Thank you.

Thank you.

Jennifer Gerbers?

Thank you for allowing me to speak tonight. I ask that these concerns be included in the meeting minutes. I'm an actual taxpaying voting resident here of Cala Mesa. And as a Mesa Verde specific plan is not simply just a housing project as they presented, it is a decision about what Cala Mesa will look like and what kind of community we're going to leave for the next generation. A project of this size demands serious environmental review. We need answers regarding the traffic, especially on County Line Road, air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, even in your report it says that it's an issue, and noise, drainage, geology, biological resources, the wildfire risk, and the cumulative impact on this project, combined with what else you're bringing to our region. This area also contains habitat that can support sensitive species, endangered species in our area, such as the Quinoa Checkerspot Butterfly, the Western Monarch Butterfly, the Crouch's Bumblebee, the Western Burrowing Owl, and of course our California Cala Mesa Tarantulas that cross across County Line Road every year here starting soon in the fall. We're asking for updated biological surveys and enforceable long-term protection of this preserved habitat, not promises that disappear once construction begins. But there's also other issues we can't ignore. Who's going to pay to maintain this project that it's created? Yes, we're getting a huge amount of money, But that doesn't say that that's going to be there continually once this project is done in 15 years. The plan proposes approximately 50 acres of parks and nearly 500 acres of open space and trails. That's nearly 550 additional acres that are going to require mowing, irrigation, vegetation management, fire prevention, habitat stewardship, repairs, public safety for decades to come. Those costs don't disappear when our developers finish building what they're building and leave in 15 years. We already have concerns about our city's ability to maintain our existing open space. Look at Creekside Park, which is near County Line Road. frequently unavailable for public use including today the adjacent open space area has experienced homeless encampments that our city is going to have to cover to get moved out illegal activity and safety problems that affect nearby residents so i think it's fair to ask if we're struggling to maintain the parks and open spaces we already have how can you confidently take on another 550 additional acres the developer not us taxpayers should be required to fully fund a perpetual maintenance trust before these responsibilities are transformed to the city because once the city is developed we can't undo it this is a permanent decision calamesa's real character open space wildfire and quality of life are part of what makes this community special. We're not against growth.

Okay, your time's up, ma'am. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mark Elliott.

Howdy, I'm Mark Elliott, 775 West County Line Road. Lived here in Cala Mesa since 1962, all in four houses right next to each other on County Line. Anyhow, the point is that we've been going through this since I was a kid. I can remember, you know, having to go to county meetings as a child because my mom had to be there at them i sat on a on a planning commission here i was a member of the fire department back in the late 70s and early 80s i've been here a while i know this town i've you know i remember when this was an open field so that's just a basic who i am anyhow the thing is Oh Mike, damn it. What the hell's happened in this town? Bills sell us out or what? I don't know. Why are we arguing about County Line Road? Everybody knows County Line Road is not a good choice. That's why when they built the dumb school without a road to it, and they wanted to do Avenue L, they wanted to do County, they were looking for all kinds of options, You know, what on earth? Why are we having this? Look what happened to Donny Yarian and his piece of property, locked off it. I know Donny's not everybody's favorite guy in the world, but neither am I. So some people like him, though. I've known Donny all my life. Grew up right next to Susie for the first few years, except for an empty field between us. Luckily, it's still there. I enjoyed seeing Explore Nature. Explore Nature, well, just leave it there then. Leave it alone. We're sorry your landlocked piece of property required removal of property from others in order to get to it. But, you know, I've been here a while. I know what we've gone through. I know what's been said at these other meetings. I've watched, I've sat on committees, I've sat on commissions. It's so cool to see you. Anyhow, I don't really have much to say other than this looks like it needs a whole lot more looking at than it's had before anybody moves any further. When are we gonna get our off ramp and on ramp for that stupid You know, gosh, I don't know. And could somebody please look into the lights down there? That was the most, you know, even before the lights were there, it was better than it is with them. If you could at least get them frickin' timed right, it would be helpful.

Thank you. Thank you.

I do have a couple of participants online. I just wanted to share a quick reminder that if they wanted to have a public comment, they needed to raise their hand. Oh, and I do have one. Norma Green. Hi there.

How you doing? Anyway. I live in the Yucaipa, Calamasa, and I visit you guys for my businesses. And you guys are lucky by, like I said, on your attachment K from your packet on 23, page 23 through 27, the letter from that person. And then also 130 to... uh 140 145 or something like that is what it is um you guys are lucky to have this many animals uh we used to see them in our area we're not seeing them now um then also you guys are talking about the fire information and unfortunately um you guys are setting these people up If you guys have it that they're not going to get house insurance. There's no way. I already have to deal with it. I'm basically have to pay an arm and a leg now for my house insurance because my company can't cancel me and I and I've wound up with bare minimum. So I'm not even sure if I did have a fire that I'm going to actually be able to rebuild my house. And then also, like I said, the traffic, yeah. You're adding the traffic to, because like I said, you guys claim that, oh, they're going to let people work there. I don't know that's actually guaranteed. I really don't know that. If they've actually, you know, talked to people, said yes, you know, went through all the criteria, you know, actually say, yeah, they're willing to hire these people. So that would be another issue. that I would really have my doubts about. But like I said, you guys are lucky. And yeah, I, you know, we have this, I'm opposed to this too. And I'm, like I said, I'm partially, I'm part Yucaipa. I live here in Yucaipa and I've heard about this and I'm distraughted by the fact that taking out the Earl and rule, Because that's what my family has come to this town to live with. We like seeing all the animals and all the horses and everything that people have. And having, you know, RVs or something if they want. You know, at least that people have that choice. That's the key. And having our animals around, that's great. You know, seeing all these different things. That is kind of amazing. I'm a farm girl, so that's how much I was raised.

Thank you, ma'am. Your three minutes is up.

Okay. Thank you.

It appears we have no other participants.

None others? Okay. So then with that, I will close the public testimony.

Mr. Chair, you can give the applicant an opportunity.

I'm sorry. Applicant's rebuttal.

I'll rebut a couple of things. The one was the $58,000 on County Line Road, and then later it was $32,000. Please do. So look, the truth will be known when you build it, because people will go where it's easiest to go. The other comment was about the parks and the open space and the fiscal impact of those. And I want to be clear, the developer and the homeowners association are the long-term providers of that maintenance. So it's not just us as developers and we walk away. That responsibility will fall on the homeowners and the business owners within the Mesa Verde specific plan. Furthermore, that 15-year number where it's about $10 million a year surplus, that doesn't stop at year 15. It continues in perpetuity. So those are probably the things. Is there anything else I should cover? Yes, I said the maintenance of the open space will be HOA-maintained and an endowment. So I think those are the kind of high points I wanted to cover. And also that the road is going to be 36 feet, not 60 feet. I think those are the things that I want to cover.

I know the city engineer and I and our traffic consultants have spent countless hours on County Line Road trying to figure out the right formula to make it work. And it is 36 feet wide, curb to curb. And it will be a left turn lane, center left turn lane. It will not be a raised median. The previous fire chief did not want a raised median. He wanted full access. And so we accommodated that. So there is opportunity to turn into your driveways from a roadway. You just get in the left turn lane. Or turn right, and there will be an opportunity to turn right into your driveway. So that has been looked at extensively, and I think that's about all we should say about that.

We're mindful of their comments and their concerns, and our intention will be to work with them as we go through the development process. Thank you. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, you can have the commissioners ask questions during the public hearing of the applicant before you close. Before I go to the next one?

All right. Mike, you have any questions?

I'm not sure if this is for the applicant or can I ask staff as well. So as far as the industrial space and the, they're speculative. And so the hope is that we get something that produces a certain amount of tax revenue, but how do those, there's five of these, I believe these industrial six, okay. How do those, how does that come about to be inhabited and how does that work? That's the one thing I don't understand because we're looking at the one that's at County Line and the freeway right now that's been built speculatively and uninhabited. So how does that work for the future? I think the residents, I wanna know and perhaps they might want to as well.

Well, first of all, from the tax revenue, We didn't analyze sales tax revenue for any of those buildings, so it's just property taxes. So the revenue is the revenue whether they're occupied or not occupied, plus the $1.50 a square foot that we would pay as part of our development agreement fee, so a little over $6 million paid as we produce certificates of occupancy. Obviously, we had a period of time of Some overexuberance in the market sometimes happens, and so these buildings have stayed empty for a little bit longer, but actually last quarter was the largest quarter in like five years for leasing activity in Riverside County, so things are picking up dramatically. But our hope will be to work and build the right product for the market at the time. So if we get fortunate and get a You know, a sales tax generator, that's great for the city, and it's great for us as well because we get a credit against our $1.50 to the extent there's sales tax revenue paid, but we did not analyze that because you can't count on a fulfillment center being your only solution. So it could just be straight logistics. It could be a fulfillment center. It could be some type of light manufacturing.

Thank you. Thank you. Mike, do you have anything?

I guess my main concerns are, as well as with the residents, is just the use of County Line being the main road. I've driven it half a dozen times this weekend, twice today going back looking at where you're coming through. I went down and looked at the water reception trying to figure out where you're gonna have access for your emergency road and all. I just don't see this being a good fit. I understand we can enlarge it, but being the road is what it is, and we're trying to shoehorn it in there, I think we definitely have to look at another access road somehow. And that's going to be an interesting fit. It's going to be an interesting fit, but I do think that would be a serious problem if we had a major evacuation trying to get through there. And if you have one of these residents pull out their RV out of their driving driveway, you're blocking off that whole street. Now, for five years, I had to make the sandalwood trek to the junior high school. If you didn't time it right, which most people don't, you spent a half hour getting in and a half hour getting out. Now, you add the truck traffic to that, okay, the residents are gonna try to shortcut that way, because they're gonna have to. But that was a cluster. It's a bad setup. So my biggest thing is the road flowing, and I think we need to actually go back and look at that. That's my main issue. I don't mind the high residency or the high density housing, because I understand that's the state coming in there stomping on us. And unfortunately, unlike Huntington Beach, we don't have no land to offer, so we can't thumb our nose at them. So we're following state guidelines on the high density. I'm with you people, because it was like our infill spaces that we went through and obliterated stuff. Is it concerned, and also, I'm sorry, I think that's an abundance of warehouse spaces. I know when I got on this board and everything else, I was always told there were only two places we would ever have warehouses. And that's where they are now, where the failed one is right now. We're waiting for Birch to start on the other side of Summer Wind, as well as the one in front of Plantation, not Plantation, oh, forgive me, Sharondale. Sorry, I'm not feeling too good here. But I just know how we are on everything else on that. And so I would highly advise that we take it under consideration. And we definitely have to figure out something else for a road. Because even if we do partially use county line, which I'm sorry, residents, you're not going to have a private road. It's going to be an access road of some form. However, I don't believe it's a good fit to expect 3,600 homes to have that one single as their main road. And so that is my main problem. And from what I've seen and what I've gone through, this massive everything else, my mind's not changing on that at this point. And I haven't been turned today. I understand the employment. understanding the build and everything else. And it's not gonna be unsightly the way it's gonna be sit and nobody's gonna build a crummy project in Cala Mesa. We have our restrictions and everything else. So everything's gonna be done right. But like I said, I just can't get over these access roads. And I think that's something that we need to go back to the drawing board on. So that's my name.

I don't know if there was a question in there, but I have a comment if I could.

Okay.

Christine.

As far as the access roads go, I think we have two, right? Is this a discussion or is this just questions?

This is just asking questions, and once the public hearing is closed, that's when you can deliberate with your opinions.

Okay, so I guess some questions for you I would have would be, as far as the 21 homes that will be affected on County Line Road, What would be some of the solutions that you would provide for these residents as far as the street widening goes? I know when we widened Singleton Road, there was lots of improvements that were done for residents that were faced with the street developments, right? They were doing curbs, they were doing setbacks, they were helping with the... basically the transition of the widening of the roads, what would be some solutions that you would provide for our residents going in to give them a little peace of mind?

One of the first things we've been working on for about a year now is the ability to underground a lot of overhead utilities. Now, I know that's more of a beautification thing, not a usability thing for people driving, but it is a beautification thing. If you drive down, when I drive down County Line Road, I see a lot of wires and poles crossing. And we've been working with, Southern California Edison takes a long time to do things. We've just this week been able to submit our preliminary documents to them after a year. But the goal is to eliminate all that overhead crossings, clean it up, give individual services to the users currently. But clean it up, beautify it a bit.

But we would contribute to their cost of underground. We would pay that cost to the owners. Because there's going to be a cost. It doesn't make sense to underground and then have a pole to each house. So we would pay for that cost to bring it from the line out to the individual homes.

How long with that? By 10.

We did the same thing at Cherry Valley Boulevard, a project that we did down there. That was abysmal, and now traffic flows because lights got timed right. I understand there's a problem today with lights.

A left turn divider. So even where it goes down to a four lane roadway with a center divider, that's a massive road to get traffic in and out of the community. So not all of the people are, not 3,600 homes are going down County Line Road. That's just not gonna happen. You got a lot of young families, they're gonna have kids, they're gonna wanna take them to the school, they're gonna drop them off at the school and they're gonna hit the freeway. They're not backtracking and trying to figure out how to get back to County Line Road. So it's just, the peak volume of traffic for County Line Road during peak volumes, okay, when people are going to work is about 14,000 So it's sizable, and we recognize that, and that's why we want to put in bike lanes and make sure it's structurally, yeah.

And the other thing is also talking about the Robert's Road down to Summerwind ultimately, so there's actually four points out of the project.

Good point, yeah.

Any other questions? Anything else?

as far as these infrastructure and construction improvements are the cost of them are quite substantial for making these connections and doing these roads and they're going to be done by occupancy the first occupancy or ongoing through certain terms correct there's a there's a sequencing that follows the kind of increase in flows

that certain improvements have to be made before we open certain buildings or before we build certain number of homes. Those kind of are all sequenced through and part of our conditions of approval, the underlying traffic report that feeds into the environmental impact report. So all of that gets codified and documented. Ultimately, the city council would take action on. But there's been a lot of thought into the conditions of approval and how this project moves forward. And we've spent, I don't know, the last year working on conditions of approval.

Funding requirements as well. I know there's, like we've had, we've spoke about as far as what's happened with Oak Valley, you know, the stops and the holes against that, insurance for making sure that we don't get stuck in any of these dead end

Well, I mean, there's no way to absolutely assure it, but you do have construction bonds. You have ways that are part of our conditions of approval. As we're building projects, we have to bond what we're doing and do subdivision bonds and, you know, that we have the fiscal ability to do the project. That doesn't guarantee that there's never what's happened at Oak Valley. But the reality is that if it's done right and in conjunction with the right developer, working with the staff, these things do happen. We built our warehouses, completed them. We built all the county infrastructure. We built all the roadways down at I-10 The I-10 Gateway project, it's not our pattern to leave things not done. So certainly in public facilities, there's agreements. In that case, there were agreements with the county that we had to have certain work done before we could get certificates of occupancy. or just even a temporary certificate of occupancy. And those are the same kinds of agreements we've made here. We have to finish a building. We have to finish all the work associated with the building, both on-site and off-site.

Thank you.

Anything else? No. A question real quick on your improvements on County Line Road from County Line Lane to your property. You said 36 foot. Was that curb to curb or is that right away including curb to curb? Curb to curb. So that takes care of the fire department with 26 foot there.

And they wanted the center turn lane as well. Right. And the idea really of this, emergency route through the Yucaipa Valley is that that's more ingress, egress for fire than it is for The residents, the idea is that if you have a fire event, you'll probably close all lanes and everybody's gonna go out. The fire department didn't want that because then they don't have a way in. So technically you'd have three lanes that would be going out on County Line Road. You could have four lanes to six lanes going out on Sandalwood. And the fire department could be using the emergency egress, ingress as a way in and out for their equipment. So that was the idea. I'm not a fire, that came from fire and other people way smarter than I am, so.

And you're doing full improvements, curb, gutter, sidewalk? Yes. From county line lane to your property line? Yes, sir. Okay, so everything's getting improved. Everything's all good there. Yes. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Now I'll close the public hearing. All right. Wow. That's a lot to think about. Basically, County Line Road is the same thing as Bryant Street when we did the change in Bryant Street when it opened up from Sandalwood to there. And I had that fun deal there. Anything else from the commission? Sorry.

All right. And we can deliberate right now.

Yes, you can deliberate. You can also ask questions of staff at this time, too.

So growth is never easy, but it's necessary. And this is a big project. And so there's a lot of considerations. But it's clear to me based on the presentation and the briefings that we got not only from staff but also from the developers that there's There's been a lot of work that's put into this. And so the legality of the project is clear. There's nothing illegal about it. And I just felt compelled to say that, because on a project of this size, it's hard to vote yes on it, because there are a lot of concerns. But I don't see any way that it can't go forward.

I agree. OK. And what I will do, I'll make a motion to adopt all resolutions, PC resolutions one through seven. I'll make that motion. Can I get a second?

I second.

We have a second. All in favor? Aye. Aye.

Nay.

Aye.

31. OK. Thank you.

Thank you.

Business item number three, 2025 Annual Progress Report.

Another item on the agenda? What the heck?

Thought it was time to go home. Yeah. Not yet.

By the way, it's 48 feet and all the paperwork says 60 feet. Side to side, 36 feet was a lot. You guys need to do your paperwork.

No, you do your paperwork. I got it too, buddy.

For 40 years it's been a bad idea Right.

Well, I will make the next item very very brief. So annually we are required to provide a annual progress report to our legislative bodies and Looks like we're getting, okay, there we go. Just a moment. So our most recent, if I can find my notes here, our most recent annual progress report showed that we only permitted six units. They were all ADUs, as shown in the staff report. And we did have, here it is, and we did have proposed units totaling 681. And so that's really all of, this is a receive and file. Our entitlement and permitting activity has slowed way, way, way down since JP Ranch and Summer Wind and Singleton Heights all built out, Summer Wind phase one. So it's, again, receive and file. We have very little permitting activity occurring and a limited number of housing units being proposed. The 681 units that were proposed are comprised of 220 units being proposed at the Country Club Village project, 542 proposed in JP Ranch, seven on West Avenue L, which was the MENA map, and then two minor development plan reviews for ADUs. Again, that's receive and file.

Happy to answer any questions you may have. Anyone have any questions on that one? No questions. Okay. All right.

My brain hurts.

Item number four. I had brought this up for item number four for recommendation to, for nomination to nominate Christine Van Heining as our new chairman and keep Mike as our vice chair because her term serves out till the end

She just got here.

Yeah. She served four years on the Planning Commission and did not get the opportunity. And since I have till 2028, I thought it would be a nice idea to let her have the chairmanship and take over. So with the vote, that's my proposal. I'm making that motion. CHRISTIE WOOD. Chair. And your turn.

CHRISTIE WOOD.

Chair Barron, hold on. I'm sorry.

You're kind of just bulldozing all over my staff report here.

I'm sorry. CHRISTIE WOOD.

You actually have a couple options just because of how the municipal code is written. If you looked at your staff report, there is a couple options. And there is another one that was presented tonight just because Commissioner Enciso is not here. There's an option to continue reorg until the next meeting when all five commissioners can be present.

Oh, OK.

So the options before you tonight is the continuing. You can open the nominations for chairperson while leaving the current vice chair. Or the vice chairperson serves as chair, and then we make an appointment for vice chair. Or we can consider other organization options. So there you go.

Clear as mud.

No, huh? So Christine's term ends when? The end of the year. At the end of the year. December. And then she has to get.

Yes, so it is concurrent with our current election. So we do have the election that ends this year and two more appointments will have to be made in December. So in January is when our usual reorg happens.

So that's why I wanted her to be the chairman because she served four years on the planning commission and was, you know, did not get, wait till next meeting.

That's up to the commission.

All right.

Wait till the next meeting.

You'll need a motion to continue this item.

I make that motion that we continue the item till the next meeting.

I second.

All in favor? Aye. Cool. There you go. So with that, Commissioner comments and reports.

Point.

Let's just see who's still here. It's a lot of work you guys put a ton of work in. I mean, unbelievable. I can understand why they're upset about it, but I just, again, I'm repeating myself,

a good project so a lot of misinformation yeah i think there's some misinformation that's a bummer that that happens but anyway christine glad to have you back thank you so happy to be back on the commission um to you guys and working on other projects um staff thank you so much for preparing such an in-depth report i feel like we didn't touch on half of it you know there are so many things in it um but well done with taking into consideration everyone's feedback and all of the important things like the fire, the different access roads and everything like that. So thank you.

Great.

Mike.

As always, staff, great job presentation as far as this packet. I guess one big ask would be, we get something this big, can we get it a few days earlier or a week earlier? Because this was absolutely ridiculous to expect us to get through this and then dump another 200 pages on us. I mean, I would try and be thorough, My head's exploding from all the extra reading I was doing today just to make sure I had it all. And then the one thing I would like to touch on since all of us are Cala Mesa residents and we have been through it, our insurance doesn't get canceled. We get non-renewed because they aren't legally able to cancel us. However, if our whole city is basically up in flames, so I would like to recommend to staff somehow to come up with an advisory committee with the fire department or whatever to figure out between county maybe I wouldn't mess with state, forget them, Cal Fire a little bit, but also other stakeholders in this as far as insurance companies is what we can do as a city to help our residents because we're getting to the point another year or two, we're not gonna have any insurance at all available. AAA is now starting to pull out. I don't know if you've heard that. I got lucky, I got AAA last year after being canceled. And it took us two and a half weeks. I built my house. I got cement siding. I got nothing but dirt. And I still had to plead with them. I got a neighbor now that's collecting wood pieces. I don't know if he's going to chip them up or anything else. I don't know what the heck he's thinking and some other people. But as a city, we need to do more for our residents because pretty soon we're going to be a ghost town because if we can't insured, nobody owns their house outright because if they do, we're going to be like Altadena where those people lost their homes and don't have insurance. And they're really up a creek. So I don't know. I know we've talked about doing the aerial refueling little pods or whatever atop a county line and other places. I think we should look at making probably any in high fire area. We probably should make those mandatory and start figuring out where to put them. Instead of thinking about them, we need to get them done. that with fire captain, you're the ultimate authority. I know we got jacked around by Cal Fire when we started our fire department with a lot of bad publicity and they sent letters to insurance companies saying we didn't have fire protection. So there was a little bent stuff on Cal Fire on that one. So I'm happy we have our own fire department, but we really need to do something because as you saw on that, well, you're well aware what the fire zone is. I mean, the insurance companies are going to walk away, so what are we going to do for our people? And we don't have a city without that. And so I'm really concerned at that, especially being in real estate and seeing and talking to homeowners and knowing what's involved with it. So that's going to be a real up and coming issue. And it's all of California, probably. But we're Cal and Mesa. We need to figure out our own city. We help out and all that. and they help us, but we need to take care of our residents. And so I'm not sure what kind of committee or whatever, but if you could brainstorm it or figure it out, It'll be an interesting one, but I guess the best part also, like I said, is if somehow get insurance companies involved and figure out, so they at least know we're trying to be good neighbors and everything, and maybe they'll look better on our residents for insurance quotes. So that's a big one for me, but thank you. That's all I got.

Thank you, Mike.

And I see here, if I may, Chair. Yes. I see our fire chief asking if he could respond. I think it's best at this time, since we don't have this item on the agenda,

just receive the comments and we can potentially bring that forth as an agendized item and i'll add too we do have a public safety uh ad hoc committee at the council level um they do both share services and fire they look at that so that is also something that i can bring to them as well um and talk about that with them as well are we currently doing anything and ask that would that that's that's the you know what you could probably respond to that during your comments you can just give him a part of time for your comments how about that it's not deliberation it's gonna be one-way communication understand I just was told this would be a good way to get it out there so at least we can get thinking about that so

I kind of count myself lucky because I've been on this project for over 30 years and I have books like this and books and books. Oh yeah, I've got everything on this project. I got maps, I got you name it. So like I said, there was a lot of misinformation that was being posted out there and people making mistakes and I corrected quite a few, you know, phone calls and stuff that I got. So those of you who are watching now are still watching, I hope. You know who you are and... I set you straight, but evidently you didn't get it back to the rest of the crew. So with that, I'm gonna say thank you, staff. This was a lot of work, 480 pages just for this one and this run, but you know.

Mine was 6.05.

That's the whole agenda. Just this one item was 480 pages. And I read it on a tablet smaller than this. I was like this.

Anyway, yes. I'm saving trees.

Yeah. Well, I'm a lumberjack, so, you know, I like paper. I like going back and reading everything after because this never disappears. Like water hits that and it's like, oh boy. Anyways, Ms. Kelly, our Community Development Director comments.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commission. Thank you for all your work on the Mesa Verde project. I would just like to let the Commission and any members of the public that may be listening be aware that tonight was only a recommended action. We'll go forward to the City Council At the City Council, public hearing is currently slated for September 21st at 6 p.m. in this room. So any members of the public that are interested in participating, please mark that on your calendar and you are able to provide additional public comment at that time. And with that, I think I will yield some of my time to the Fire Chief.

There you go.

Good evening, Commission. Paul Lindley, I'm the Fire Chief for the City of Cala Mesa. To answer your question, sir, yes, we are currently in a process of looking at options enhance fire protection in the form of community awareness through the community risk reduction list, fire-wise. We're also looking at the zone zero requirements that are gonna be coming in that are gonna be forced upon us through CAL FIRE that will be enacted upon current residents. And we're also looking at our community wildland protection plan. I've been working with fire safe councils on the ability to get that fully funded so it doesn't cost the city anything. So we are working. to be fiscally and feasibly responsible for meeting the needs of the community and addressing these problems concurrently. So I just wanted to bring that up to the council or the commission. Thank you.

Thank you. With that, I call the meeting, 825.