Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, good evening. By way of introduction, my name is Davis Fields. I am the chair of the Campbell Planning Commission. I'd like to call to order this meeting of the commission on June 23rd, 2026. Commissioner Scissor? Here. Commissioner Kamkar?

Here.

Commissioner Elney? Here. Commissioner Buckbinder? Present. Vice Chair Aquino? Present. And Chair Fields? Present. First item is the minutes. Has everyone had a chance to review the minutes and are there any corrections? I have a few notes.

Yeah. On the parks presentation, there were a few things that were brought up that aren't reflected in the minutes. One, that we are indeed under parks in the sense of city parks, but if you count county parks as well, we are well above the three acres per thousand residents goal. And additionally, there's some notes there about the burden of cost to the individual. The comparative burdens are we can do a one-time charge of about $12,000 for every new person who comes to town, or we can charge every parcel about $35 a year. Like, that's the actual burden. I think that should be noted in the minutes. That's what I have.

Okay. You want that noted as your comments? Sure.

Yeah. Anything else for the minutes?

Yeah. Can I ask...

where how do you know what you just said to be true math i added up the amount amount that they had gotten over the last um five to seven years i know we have about 17 000 parcels in the city do a little motivational division that's what it comes out to okay but that would tell you what they received but what they received was insufficient to meet the stated goal correct So what they received was an amount of money to stick on the modification. Yeah, we're good. That is the if the burden had been moved, that's what the burden would have been. That's the thing I want to make sure we all know.

Would someone make a motion with the amended comments that we just discussed? Right. Do we have a second? Second. Can we have a roll call, please?

Commissioner Scissor? Aye. Commissioner Kamkar?

Aye. Commissioner Alney? Aye. Commissioner Buckbinder? Aye. Chair Fields? Aye. Communications, agenda modifications. Director Eastwood, do we have any of these?

Chair Fields, all commissioners know agenda modifications. A note to the commission, you received two public comments. One was earlier today. One, Secretary Daniel Fama pushed out after five. Just want to make sure you receive those.

Nothing additional. Great. Okay, oral requests. This is the part of the meeting where any member of the public may address the commission on an item that is not on the agenda. You may speak for up to five minutes, but please be aware state law prohibits the commissioner from acting on non-agendized items that may come up today. So the Planning Commission will not take any action on anything that is spoken in this time, but the chair can refer the matter to staff to research and possibly place on the agenda for a future meeting. I understand we have one person who wants to speak in oral requests. Susan Landry.

Good evening, Honorable Planning Commission. Am I your favorite public speaker so far? Anyways, I have a handout here. So you guys have subcommittees. I have a recommendation for you for a subcommittee. How many of you have a home occupation permit or business license? Any of you guys? No, okay. So I have a home occupation. I invented a board game. I got a new business license. Prior to me getting a business license, I was allowed to work in my living room. But now that I have a business license, I'm not allowed to work anywhere but one room in my house. I cannot sit on my couch in my living room and check my email because I'm conducting business. My client called me up and asked me, can I swing by and drop off your check? and stop and have a cup of coffee and talk about your job. No, I'm sorry, you're not allowed to come to my house because I have a business license that says I'm not allowed to have a meeting in my house. I live in an ADU. I've bragged about living in my 400 square feet. And part of my 400 square feet goes out my door into the garage. My storage cabinet for all my office supplies is in the garage. I can't do that anymore. I am not allowed to be in my garage with my business as I'm working. So a music instructor is allowed to have one person come at one time. They can play the trombone or banjo or piano outside my window on the other side of the fence. They can have one per hour from nine to nine, and I'm not allowed to have my guy drop off a check. But because he plays music, he can do that. I'm not allowed to make any noise coming out of my property, but my neighbor can play, have someone visit and play their music. I'm not allowed to use my garage. I think I told you that. I'm not allowed to use my closet because it's in the garage. I'm not allowed to sit out in my yard on my brand new little bistro table and drink my coffee and read my email because I'm conducting business. Let's see, what else can't I do? I mean, this whole list is interesting. Now, who's going to find me? Who's going to turn me in? Good question. But I signed this statement saying I won't do these. I have to attest to this that I will not do this. but no one's gonna enforce it. So why are the rules still on the book? So I came in, I talked to Steven. Oh yeah, this hasn't been changed since 2006. I think the only update is used to say piano instruction and now it says music is allowed. So also attached to my handout is what San Jose has, which is a lot more realistic. You're allowed to have two people in your room to have a meeting. I'm allowed to have my storage and my accessory shed. I'm allowed to be in my garage. I'm allowed to have two people in a meeting. on and on. Now, the only thing San Jose does say is you can't be in your yard. So again, I can't sit outside on my bistro table with my laptop and check my email because I'm technically constructing business. So what's interesting, if I work from home and I'm employed by someone else and I work from home, I can do all those things. I can use my garage, my storage locker, my yard, you name it, but because I'm self-employed, I can't do that. So I'm asking for you guys maybe have a subcommittee and look at this ordinance and really that's not caught up with the times. I mean, I can't sit on my couch and do a Zoom call because of my giant screen TV is in that room. Now, I understand where a lot of this comes from. You don't want a guy having a machine shop in his garage, hazardous material, fumes, you name it. I get all of that, but we haven't caught up with where we are with technology. I can see you say any permanent equipment, your big CPU, your printer has to be in your one room, but infrequent intermittent use of your laptop, portable devices sitting in your living room table or whatever. But the sheer fact of, I don't want to drive. You guys don't want us driving, right? I now have to go drive somewhere to have my guy drop off my check. Because I can't have them come to my house or to my door. This is really crazy. So I'm here to bring this to your attention. San Jose is way more realistic. I lived in San Jose for years. I had a business in there. My client could show up. The only thing they still have is you can't be in your yard. Hey, I get it. But if you're sitting on your laptop, come on. I'm not making noise. I don't have anything hazardous that should be allowed. So I'm here asking you guys, I know you can't respond today. You can ask me questions, but I know you can't say you're gonna do this, but any questions?

So I just have a comment, not a question, but I think these rules are silly. We're not gonna speak on that today.

You can't speak on the topic, but you are allowed to ask me questions.

Well, you answered the question I had as to, you know, why were these laws in the books?

2006, Stephen and I had a whole long conversation. He said, I think the only thing that's been updated since 2006 was instead of a piano lesson, it was a music lesson. So now the guy next door can play the trombone every hour for nine hours a day, but I'm not allowed to sit outside and read my laptop.

Okay, well, I'll just say that I think we clearly understand the issue. And your comments make sense. And I would suggest we just refer not only to the commission, but also to discuss it with the planners for future consideration.

Great. That's all I really am here to ask for. And thank you for listening.

Thanks so much. Would anyone else like to speak during this portion of the meeting?

Ken, is there anybody online?

All right, I am going to close oral requests. We're gonna start the public hearing. We have one regular item tonight. I will give you a brief overview of how these go. Staff gives a presentation for the first portion of time. There'll be a presentation on the screens that you can follow along with. Then there's a chance for the commission to ask staff questions. At that point, we will open the public hearing. The applicant has a chance to speak, and then we will move to public comment. You each have up to two minutes. You can come up to the dais, the same as folks have been doing, and address the commission. After we've gone through everybody, both here and online, we will then close the public portion. The commission will debate and vote on the item. Before we start on the items, commissioners, do we have any disclosures regarding items on our agenda tonight? Let's start on this side.

I visited the property, actually went into the parking lot and drove around and took a couple pictures.

I have been to the property, but not late.

I've been to the property.

I drove by it tonight. I'm sure that I've been to past the property, but I have no memory of what it looks like. I looked at it on Google Maps.

Makes sense. All right, well, I will bring us to our item. Item number two, 1500 East Hamilton Avenue, a minor housing development project permit and vesting tentative subdivision map where the recommended option is to adopt a resolution approving a minor housing development project and a vesting tentative subdivision map. Per usual, our project planner is Mr. Daniel Fama. Thank you, good evening.

Before you is an application for a minor housing development project permit and a 10 investing map with use of state density bonus law for property located at 1500 East Avenue. This site approximately 2.8 acres is currently developed with a two story office building constructed circa 1977 back when the property was under the jurisdiction of Santa Clara County before it was annexed into the city of Campbell in 1982. It is located at the southwest corner of Hamilton and Lee Avenues. It was rezoned by the city's 2023 general plan to medium high density mixed use with a corresponding general plan designation that affords a base density of 26 to 33 units per gross acre. The project is proposing 74 townhome-style condominiums across 12 rows, again, with use of state density bonus law waivers. The Canada subdivision map would allow for 13 common lots and 74 condominiums. In terms of design, you have three-story tall townhome buildings, approximately 39 feet in height, comp roofing, and various cladding materials, including stucco, siding, and snow veneer. And then color schemes that include shades of white, gray, blue, and taupe. In terms of affordable housing, the city's affordable inclusionary housing ordinance requires that 15% of the 74 units be provided at below market rates. And the specific breakdown of that is a minimum of five low income units and six moderate income units. However, to qualify for state density bonus law, the applicant had to convert some of the moderate units to low-income units. So the project proposes seven low and four moderates, and that allows the project to qualify at the 10% low-income level under state density bonus law. That would afford the project a 20% density bonus, which is not being exercised. The project density is basically at the bare minimum. So the city's general plan actually requires at least 74 units for this project.

They could not actually be lost.

The law also allows for unlimited waivers, and as discussed in the applicant's DESE bonus waiver and concessions request document that's included in your packet, that includes the allowance of removal of trees without a tree removal permit, deviation from setback standards, including adjacency standards, and broad exceptions to chapters of the multifamily development design standards document to allow the project to proceed as designed. There's also one concession that is allowed, and that is a concession from the frontage undergrounding requirements. So there are overhead utility lines that currently run along Hamilton Avenue. Ordinarily, those lines and the poles would need to be removed and replaced with underground service. And so the concession is intended to allow those improvements to remain as they are, which is a significant cost saving to the project. That is the purpose of the concession. In terms of review considerations, as the Commission is aware, the City's discretion over housing development projects is severely restrained by both the Housing Accountability Act and the Housing Prices Act, which together fairly limit the City's consideration of the application to compliance with the objective standards that may be found in the Municipal Code or General Plan, except where a density bonus waiver or concession is requested. That basically makes the city's multifamily development design standards functionally optional to the extent that developer actually wants to comply. And then in terms of general plan consistency, as I noted, the core requirement for consistency is meeting the minimum density, which the application does, achieving a density of 26.33 units per acre. And then lastly, with regard to compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act Environmental Review, this application does qualify for a Class 32 infill exemption, which is basically a recognition there are no special circumstances or issues associated with a conforming infill housing project in the infill site. Therefore, based on the affirmative determination of the required findings for a housing development project permit, a tentative map, and CEQA, staff does recommend that the Applying Commission adopt a resolution approving the minor housing development project permit along with the tentative map to allow a 74-unit housing development project. With that, I will take any questions the Commission may have. Thank you.

Thank you, Daniel. Why don't we start on this end with Commissioner Bookbinder.

so uh two things just for context um what makes this a minor housing development project as opposed to i guess what's up around the other side of that or will be a major housing development project so basically anything that is five units or more is a minor project minor projects are considered by the plan

Now, there are some subset of that that are carved out that are classified as major projects, and those are applications that go to the city council. Those are largely sites that are five acres or larger, through lots that are three acres or larger, and sites that have a frontage that's an exceedance of, I believe, over 700 linear feet. And this is close, but it doesn't hit 700. And so if it doesn't hit those thresholds, then it remains with the Planning Commission as decision-making authority.

Okay. Would it be fair to say that our authority is pretty much constrained in that given that they're using state density bonus law and under the HAA and HCA, we cannot condition, shrink, or deny the project?

Correct. I mean, in fact, there's actually legislation currently under consideration in the Senate that's already passed the Assembly that would make any density bonus project that qualifies for the CEQA exemptions that were adopted last year to be approved ministerially. so there's a high chance that this project if considered next year would actually not even come to the final commission at all it would simply be reviewed ministerially by staff so that is where the legislature is for incredible thank you that's my questions so if we have to approve it why is it here now anyway very good question As a matter of law, it still is the city's municipal code provisions that require this application be considered in a discretionary manner. That is a policy decision of the city. The city council could amend the city's requirements to require these applications to be approved ministerially if they wish. But as I noted, there's a good chance that the state may beat us to the punch and require these projects to be ministerially approved anyways.

I'd like to thank you for teeing that up. We'll call that foreshadowing for presentation later on. Do you have any other questions?

Thank you, Chair. We've received a letter from one of the residents regarding traffic and parking. Can you address that?

So this application do not trigger a traffic study. That's largely because you have a large office building that has a lot of vehicle trips associated with it. So for traffic studies, you basically look at what's currently there, what's being proposed. And if there is a net increase of 100 trips during the AM or PM peak hours and that traffic setting is required, that did not happen because you have a big bulk of existing trips. And so that basically nullifies any new trip generation. So traffic study is not required there. In terms of parking, much of the city is not subject to any parking requirement under AB 2097. This is not one of them. It is outside of that boundary. However, as a state density bonus project, there is a hard cap on the number of parking spaces the city can require. And even if the city did try to actively enforce that, a developer could also seek a waiver from those parking standards and basically provide whatever parking they feel is acceptable for the project.

Okay, so thank you for that answer. My question, though, is an office receives traffic during the peak, you know, whereas a residential, you know, sends cars up during AM, you know, peak traffic. How is that reconciled?

Maybe Matthew wants to speak to the traffic study requirements. This is Matthew G, our traffic engineer.

It's on, it's on. The number of trips is, it's calculated based on IT trip generation rates, which is a published industry standard. The number of trips in or out. Yeah, we would love to hear this.

Because this affects our neighborhood.

Sure.

Just speak up, Matthew.

Okay. We use the ITE trip generation manual. It's a published industry standard. It's based on surveys of existing alike land uses. The total number of trips is calculated for the proposed housing project, as well as The existing office buildings. So it's the total And the difference between the two is what's used to compare with Our general plan and when traffic studies are required. And based on the net amount, it falls below the threshold that is set by the general plan.

But the AMPM doesn't come into it, it's just the total?

The total, yes, if a study were done, then you would get into those details of how much is inbound and outbound. And each different land use has a different directionality of traffic, and that gets accounted for. But in terms of setting when a study is required, it's the net of both land uses.

So the developer is free to do a traffic study if they like, they're just not being required to do so.

So I understand why you would use estimates in theory for the proposed future building because it's the future. But why would you not use the actual traffic result for the existing structure when the entire traffic requirement is predicated on a delta?

You could do either. And even if you didn't take credit for the existing office building trips, the ITE trip generation rates would forecast the housing trips would be below 50 trips in a peak hour. So that's below our threshold.

So if I understand what you just said, If the parcel were empty, and you put this development on it, it still wouldn't trigger because the delta from zero to where it's at is insufficient to trigger the traffic. It's still below.

Can I ask a follow up question? So how big of a apartment complex would there had to have been to have triggered it? Like this was 74 units, like just ballpark?

Approximately, I can't do the math in my head right now, but probably around 90 units.

Commissioner Zisser. Sorry. Sorry, go ahead. Is that from nothing or from the current use?

Without deducting.

So from an empty lot to 90 units.

Right. And then if we counted the existing traffic, we would have to give credit.

Oh, so it would be a higher number. Yeah, true. So it's not like this was particularly close than even to. OK.

I don't have any questions on the traffic. OK, but I do have other questions. So so first of all, I just. As I've done before, I'd just like to state that I have problems with the fact that this is considered a minor project. And that to me, the problem with it being a minor project is the developer has the option not to have us see a preliminary see the preliminary application and review it early. So that's why we get it at this point without having ever seen it before. And that's because it's a minor project, if I'm correct.

There is not.

That's what we've been told in the past.

I don't believe that's correct. The preliminary application process is voluntary. I think it may speak to encouraging major projects to come before voluntarily proceeding with the preliminary application, but it's not a requirement. Even for major? I don't think it's for major. Let me double check. The challenge there is that under the Housing Crisis Act, we're limited to five public hearings, so a mandatory free application would burn one of those hearings.

I'm going to have one. I don't know what other hearings we're going to have.

I'm able to hear.

It is not a required preliminary application type.

I just want to state my fact that we've seen fairly large projects and it comes here at the end of the project and we don't get a chance to although there's no discretionary, that we don't get a chance to provide the developer with input and suggestions. So this is just another example of the Virginia Avenue one was a similar example. And we've seen others where I think a 74 unit is a big enough project that we should have that input. So I'm just putting that down as my continued concern.

the question i have is uh this was this was zoned mixed use and it's not mixed use so why are we even here it does not have to be mixed use it could have been a hundred percent commercial project or a mixed use project or a hundred percent residential project uh the city's mixed use designation is not meant And even if it was, they could also simply seek a waiver from that requirement anyway.

So why do we stipulate mixed use in the housing element and the new zoning that we did a couple of years ago? Why do we stipulate that if we're not going to hold to that?

Well, it provides the opportunity for developers if they were to do it in a different type of form. I mean, obviously, with a town-owned project, you can't really do ground floor commercial. But if the economy were different and it supported construction of more vertical housing with ground floor commercial, then perhaps. But obviously, the economy is exceedingly challenging for that type of construction at the moment. So there is an option not to do the mixed use, is what you're saying? Correct. It's not a mandatory output.

Okay. So... You know, the other question I had is kind of answered by the fact that it's mixed use, but I'll ask it anyway. It's like, you know, I was, you know, earlier in my tenure, I was here when we did the housing element and we did the new zoning and we attached new higher density to this. I think this is on the housing element, if I'm not mistaken. And so we attached higher densities. And so on this one, we put it at the 26 to 33, or whatever it is, and zoned it mixed use. So my impression, you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that when we were doing that, we envisioned probably apartment building or condominium building with mixed use on the retail floor because it's at the corner of Hamilton and Lee, and that would make some sense. So I was going to have the question about why, you know, the question of why this is what it is when I was guessing that we weren't really envisioning town. Let's see. Let's see. So it looks to me like they're gonna knock all the trees down. Yeah, right. And so there was no interest in trying to save those large, mature trees on Lee.

Well, I mean, as you can see with the site layout, I mean, it's so really tight. There's really not any feasible way to save trees. I mean, that's the challenge with town and projects at this density is that they do take a lot of real estate as opposed to a stacked flat site that could consolidate the development in a smaller footprint.

Okay. The question that, you know, they're facing, front-facing on Hamilton, but it's side-facing on Lee. And we tend to like to have front-facing on streets, yet we're not doing that here. Can you explain to me whether or not that was a discussion?

Well, it wasn't a discussion because, again, unfortunately, the reality of contemporary California planning, we're going to still call it that, is that the developer runs the show and they will propose what they feel is financially feasible to construct.

Okay. There was one other question. Oh, about about parking. So you're saying we're outside the half mile radius, right? Okay. And we do have parking standards outside half mile radius, do we not? We do. And are those more than two per unit?

I'd have to double check.

Okay, so but they can't they could because they're only doing there's no visitor parking in this. There's a small number of other spaces in 15. Okay, I didn't catch that. All right. Yeah. That's all I have.

Thank you. One question, there was a, in the letter, there was a comment about like the size of the alleyways as it related to traffic and fire, assuming those of all, those are all standardized.

They are. I mean, the application did have to go through a alternative means and method review through the fire department. So the applicant team spent a fair amount of time with the fire department to ultimately clear the design.

have a poll just as i understand it there's a tension between um account developers wanting to be able to build taller and close together in the fire department wanting to be able to fit their trucks in and get to the roof yes so you often have um height issue with the height of the buildings and the roof lines ensuring that

The ladder trucks can get up to the roof, and if the design isn't to their satisfaction, then they would otherwise require aerial access, which requires wider roadways. So there's often kind of a push and pull between developers and the fire department to find kind of a medium. Sometimes the... fire department basically agrees that in exchange for increased fire protection which is to say a greater number of fire sprinkler heads throughout the buildings uh to allow some deviations from strict application of the code standards which is basically their prerogative and they have a very uh rigorous process that goes through multiple layers of leadership before those thoughts decisions are made great no more questions

Then I will open up the public hearing for this item. This commission follows the Campbell City Council's guidance on time allotment. Applicants can speak for up to five minutes and members of the public can speak for up to two on each item. Would the applicant like to speak? You're not required to, but are welcome. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Fantastic. If you could please identify yourself.

Yes, my name is Jim Sullivan. I'm a resident of Campbell 1263 Chamberlain Court representing the property owner tonight. And I have a quick presentation that I'd like to go over. I'm going to go through it quickly so I can answer some of the questions I heard earlier. So Ross Green Valley 2 is a property owner, East Hamilton Avenue. This is a kind of a mock-up of the product type. Next slide, please. A little bit about myself. I've done multiple Campbell projects. We'll have another one hopefully coming before you in the next two months. Next slide, please. I think Daniel already showed this. Next slide, please. So 2.75 acres just for your own edification, just slightly over 41,000 square feet of existing office space. 53% of that is vacant. And obviously built in 1977, it's a little bit dilapidated for today, based on today's standards. Next slide, please. So we talked about the number of units contemporary architecture. Basically, this is 1300 to 1800 square foot product. All homes will have an attached two car garage, certain portion of those are tandem, but most are side by side. As Daniel mentioned, 11 units allocated as affordable housing. Next slide, please. This is just a copy of, I think, the overall site plan that I can refer back to if you have any questions, but Daniel's might be better. Next slide, please. Oh, Daniel already showed that, that's the BMR. Project benefits, so obviously providing the affordable units, those affordable units target the employees of and residents of Campbell, addressing Campbell's RHNA numbers, providing an opportunity for homeownership, close to employment, the tax revenue that's associated with it. I will say that this site, having been purchased some time ago, is basically a $10 million valuation. We think it'll be closer to 100 million after it's built out. I know that the city doesn't get the big part of that. It goes to kind of the state, the county, the schools, and then the city. And then obviously there's the one-time creation of jobs in constructing and $2.5 million in taxes and other local government revenues. So really quickly with my time remaining, first of all, I want to thank Daniel for being a great planner on this project for me. And a couple of things that came up. So the tree removal permit that was mentioned that Daniels said, we did do a tree survey and there were 53 trees that we studied. Nine of those trees were considered offsite trees. And so those are not being touched. Of the 44 on-site trees that were looked at, 37 of those are considered protected, but not heritage. The 37 trees that would be protected would require 16 24-inch box trees and 11 36-inch box trees. With our plan, we are actually proposing seven 15 gallon trees, 40 24 inch box trees, and 12 36 inch box trees. Really quickly, if I can just touch now on the traffic, I do want to point out that there is, and I'm not sure if it came from the traffic engineer for the city or came from the public works department, but there's a condition of approval of us restriping Lee Avenue to basically help with traffic concerns that kind of currently exist. I also want to say that I don't think it's 90. I think it's closer when the question was asked, how many units would require a traffic report? If we're doing 74 units and we're right at about 50 a.m. and p.m. peak hour trips, it's basically double that. You need to have to create 100 a.m. or p.m. peak hour trips to generate a traffic study. With the existing use on site, so I mean, even if the site was vacant, one of the commissioners had brought up if the site was vacant, would it still trigger a traffic study? The answer is no. With regard to the higher density, Commissioner Zisser, I know that you had talked about, not just on this project, but Going to higher densities, you know, you kind of want to create more units. But what I'm trying to do is make sure that I bring forth units or bring forth projects that will actually are feasible to build. And this project, if and when approved, will be built. Luca, are there any other slides? Oh, a tentative schedule. So application was filed in early 2025. We did, I did, I had a previous planner before Daniel and asked her if there was a neighborhood association group that I could reach out and contact. And I think that the Dry Creek Prune Yard Association contacted them and said, actually met in somebody's house and it was very well attended. There were 25 or 30 people. And I kind of laid out, you know, kind of what my plan was. They had brought up their concerns regarding adjacency standards. And I explained to them that I had to create this number of units, right? And my job is to try and create something that's gonna be beautiful, that will sell and hopefully will be attractive, basically attractive to the neighborhood. So I anticipated here in June of 2026, we would think that groundbreaking could begin in spring of 2027, maybe in March or April. And the planned opening for the units would be in early 2028. Next slide. Are there any questions for me?

Maybe we will move to the question portion. Thank you. Questions? I have a question.

So I remember when you were presenting for the Virginia Avenue project, it seemed like it was going to go to construction too. And I think the next thing I heard, it got sold. Is that a possibility here as well?

Yeah, so great question. The property owner at the time was a company called Valley Oaks Partners. And so they had bought that property along with several other properties from San Jose Water Company. It was an old water company site. And they're not builders. So their goal was to sell it. And as you know now, it's KB Homes that's building that development. In this, my other project on Llewellyn, Pulte Homes hired me directly. They were under contract to acquire it. And so they're building out that project right now. In this particular case, the gentleman that owns it is a commercial developer, right? That's what he does. And he owns several buildings kind of around the South Bay, but he's not a residential builder. So the plan here will be if and when it's approved, will be sold to a KB or a Toll or a Pulte or, you know, somebody of that nature.

Commissioner Alney. Yeah. When this is all said and done, the issue, one issue that I have with it is how people leave the property, because the two places that they have egress to forces them to make right turns effectively during commute hours. because the backup at the light goes past the egress point in both directions. I live in a house I was raised in, and I know that intersection very well. So that's going to force everybody to turn right on Lee and then turn right on a neighborhood street to get out over to Bascom and make their way to shops or Highway 17. And I would have liked to have seen a two-way left turn lane or a way for someone to make a U-turn on Lee so that they can get back onto Hamilton, which is the main artery to get to 17. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Yeah, you know, obviously, if you go out on Hamilton, particularly if it's crowded, it would be very difficult to make, you know, to get all the way over to the left to make a U-turn. I mean, I've done it, but not during a.m. or p.m. peak hours, right? And, you know, likewise, you know, when I've gone out, and I forgot if there's the ability to make a left turn on Lee right now or not.

It's a dedicated right turn. coming out on the egress that's on Hamilton. If you come out the other egress, it's theoretically possible to pull a left, but you really can't.

With the traffic times that you're saying. Yeah, I understand that. And I mean, it's, you know, I mean, we're obviously, we've pulled the street that exits onto Lee as far away from the intersection as possible.

A noble effort, but not going to work.

Yeah, and just, I'm sorry to point out to, I forgot, I think it was Commissioner Cicero that asked about the parking. You can see kind of in the upper right hand of the site plan map where we have parking right along there. And then there's also actually parallel parking along the road that kind of comes off of Hamilton. And it's a total of 15 guest parking spaces. So we're right at about 2.2 parking spaces per unit. And somebody had asked a question I believe about the parking requirements. 2.2 is the minimum that I would feel comfortable in doing and a developer or builder would feel comfortable in doing. But the state actually allows you to go down to I think 1.5 parking spaces per two and three bedroom units. So we're well over kind of what the state minimum is.

So you mentioned some of the units have tandem parking. How many of those tandem parking compared to the guest parking? You said you have 15 parking spaces. How many?

Yeah, you know, I have, by the way, my civil engineer is in the audience today, as well as David Burton, who's with KTGY. David Burton with KTGY is my architect. And I think that he's on the line. Do you have a David Burton by any chance?

I counted eight or 10. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. It's about, you know, around 20%.

Because the reason for my concern is those tandem units, the unit parking space in the back is almost never gets used.

I know what you're saying, Commissioner Kamkar, I do. I will tell you that I think 10 or 12 years ago when I first started doing this in Haywards downtown, I heard the same thing. But in order to kind of get the density, In livability, it's something that's done and it's fairly common now and usually at a greater percentage than what I'm doing on this particular site. For instance, like Pulte Homes in Milpitas and Santa Clara, half of their 147 units are tandem parked. David, you're able to speak if you would like.

I'm here if if there are questions for me how many tandem units uh i should have been looking while you guys were talking uh as jim said it's a small percentage uh about 18 of the units are tandem

The other thing that I want to make clear is this, because everything in here will be a private street, it will be maintained by a homeowners association, and CC&Rs that we will actually share with the city will require people to park in their garage and keep the space for two cars available and basically prevent them under threat of towing and or fines from parking in the guest parking spaces.

never know yeah yeah i had uh some of my questions were answered but um jim uh first on the on the trees on the south and west side that border the neighborhoods so you got a lot of trees on the south side which is good you don't have so many trees on the west side. And when I went there actually today, there's a lot of homes there that don't have tree lines themselves. So I was wondering if you only have like six or seven trees there covering that whole area. I was wondering if there's room to add more trees to get a tree line there for the neighbors, to block the neighbors in the long term.

Yeah, so to answer that question, and again, I could bring my civil engineer up to talk. Not yet, Graham. But I believe that the issue that we had, and I would love to plant more, quite frankly. You can see that where we had room to plant, we planted as much as we can. I believe that we have the way that the site slopes that the water is going there and it's bio-treatment that we're doing. So bio-treatment is number one. There's C3 requirements that we're required to do, you know, pursuant to state regulation. And also fire department, we're dealing with the County of Santa Clara Fire Department, wants to make sure that there's a complete, you know, ability for them to get around to access both for ladder pads, as well as egress windows. But I'm happy to actually, any of the neighbors that back up into there, I would be happy to talk with them, outline, and if I can put either more screening on our property, I will. And if I can put more screening on their property, I will.

Okay, well... I hope the site is tight. I hope they take them. Yeah, I can see that. I have to take it up. Yeah, I'm not, you know, I've seen a number of your, your things and you try hard to make the site interesting and put in, you know, some, but, and I didn't realize there were 15 spaces for some reason I missed that. I don't know if I have, I guess just to follow up to the egress and ingress. I mean, when I look at this, I don't see a choice. Were there other considerations on the, I mean, obviously, on the Lee Avenue entrance, it's as far south as you can get. Was there considerations for dealing with this in some way better? I mean, I'm not sure I see a solution, but...

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, just in kind of eyeballing it, right, you would think, okay, if you brought that, you know, kind of north-south street that's coming off of Hamilton all the way to the bottom. So then that's right next to the back of those, you know, kind of neighbors. And you're potentially doing, even though the buildings would be farther back, you know, would there be a concern of, hey, you know, we're going to have kind of traffic noise. And I don't know that we would... that it would work as well, because you would have super long paseos, you know, without a natural break to kind of go through.

You did it at Llewellyn. Yeah. That's a whole different thing.

Okay, that's all the questions. So we kind of moved on. So we dealt with the question about egress, but I also have one for ingress. So ingress from Lee Avenue is not so bad because if somebody stops traffic to make a left across the double yellow line, the traffic has a way to line up and do its thing. But on Hamilton, it's a much bigger problem because you're backing up people into the intersection. So I would have preferred to see no ability to turn left from Hamilton onto the property because not too far up the road, there's a dedicated signal light with a left turn lane light. So people can go up, make a U-turn and not impact the flow of traffic.

I'm not sure if you can make a left when you're coming west on Hamilton into the site.

You can now, but you're technically maybe not supposed to because there are double yellow lines for like six feet. But people do it. I see it. And they're going to certainly do it when there's more houses there. So I think it would be wise to prohibit that because, like I said, there's a light right up the road. They can make a U-turn and be fine.

Yeah, and we'll be going, you know, this is essentially the entitlement phase. We still have to do, and there's conditions of approval attached with this project.

In fact, you can see where they can make the left right there.

You're talking about putting something on the street.

Making a curb, essentially, instead of double yellow lines.

But that's the city's responsibility. There you go. But the city sometimes talks to developers about these.

But what I was going to say, Commissioner, is we're still going to go through final map and improvement plans. And I think that there's going to be the opportunity for your public works director, Roger, to discuss that with us.

Okay.

Adam, do you have any?

I do have more questions.

For him?

Yes. Okay. Okay, so I do want to talk to your civil engineer if this is the right time regarding the C3. Thank you, sir.

civil engineers Graham Goodwin, working for Civil Engineers Associates, a Campbell engineering company.

Very nice. That's right. Good evening. Hi, Graham. So my name is Matt. I'm also a civil engineer, and I do C2B4. You know, our clients, some familiar with it. The silver cells, don't they have to have trees? So do you have trees in your several cells?

Yes. So kind of along the central drive there, there's some kind of, this is probably the parking that's hard to see. There are some parallel stalls along, I think those are the even numbered buildings. Yeah, so where the silva cells are present, they can't be under a vehicular travel way. They can only be under parking due to structural loading. So we do have those tree wells or landscape pockets adjacent to any silva cells that are present in the project. okay um so they don't have to be in the center of the silver cell area they can be on the side yeah exactly the intent is that um they provide an area that the tree roots can grow into uh and that those tree roots provide the you know bio filtration aspect that is otherwise achieved by plants on a surface level and just for your for your reference the um Gilman and Dillon Avenue project that's currently under construction, a couple blocks that way, that is a project where we're utilizing the silva cells. So those are currently under construction but there haven't been any issues installing that.

So along the just parking on the north, I guess yeah right there, so there you have one tree on each side as well.

Yeah, I can't recall. I don't think we have silver cells in every one of these areas. I can't recall exactly which ones, but everywhere there is a silver cell. The ratio is one tree per 50 silver cell boxes. And that's been established by the manufacturer through third party testing.

Got it. Then for the interior of the buildings, you know, do you have flow through planters and

Yeah, so you can see kind of the slightly darker green rectangles between the buildings along with the seos. So those are the more traditional above ground biotreatment planters. So those will have a biotreatment soil mix that includes, you know, kind of a mix that's set by the county that's been established and tested to meet water quality standards. So 100% of the site will be treated via low impact design as a way to improve the water quality. So it's all in compliance with state ordinances and how that's interpreted by the county water board.

Okay. All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much. Thank you for saving that question for him. I wasn't going to be able to answer that one.

That seems like all of our questions for now. We'll have a couple minutes for you at the end too.

And while we have the landscaping sheet up, I just wanted to highlight one comment. The fire department is very increasingly concerned in tight sites like this that they have sufficient ladder access. And as part of that, they're concerned about trees growing and obstructing that access. So this application was actually held up in part towards the end because of the trees along the back at buildings 11 and 12 on the right side. So those trees basically were too big in an earlier iteration of the landscaping plans. And so the fire department demanded that they get smaller so that they don't grow so large that they actually block the ladder pad access to those buildings. So unfortunately, that's an example that it would actually be a significant code compliance issue for the sprees to be larger, unfortunately.

Can we, I have a follow up to another question, not another thing.

To the applicant?

um let's see um i guess it would be staff is okay sure all right so i guess this would be that matthew about the about the traffic and the terms um i just wanted to get you're the traffic guy i wanted to get your thoughts on the issue of the egress ingress and only right only turns and what you see is potentially a problem there, whether or not the city is concerned about that.

It's easier once the thing is built to know how people are going to behave. Looking at the sketch and the staff report, it does look like the driveway on Hamilton Avenue is located along a portion of Hamilton Avenue where it's just a double yell line. So there isn't a double-double. So people technically could make a left turn across. It's legal. But I agree that it could be challenging, especially during peak traffic. And eastbound traffic is very heavy in the evening. And it's pretty heavy southbound on Lee Avenue as well.

So is there anything that we would want to consider doing that maybe we would want to have a condition of this? Or is this something you'd have to study?

I think we're going to have to study. Lee Avenue is going to be challenging in any case because you've got a combination of existing driveways, the church on the east side of Lee. You've got traffic coming up from Piccadilly, that area. And then on Hamilton Avenue, we have to make sure that there's enough room so that the lanes align across Lee Avenue. So it's kind of difficult to design on the fly.

All right, thanks, Matt. Gonna open it up to members of the public. You have up to two minutes. Ken, do we do any speaker cards for this or?

Chair, I do not have speaker cards right now.

So one at a time, whoever would like to come up. Yeah, please join. If you could please...

I've never done this before, so I don't know what the light means.

You're good. It's green. If you could just state your name. Okay.

My name's Colleen O'Connell, and I live at 1464 Piccadilly Place, directly behind the Lee and Hamilton building. I have lived there for over 70 years, so I have seen this whole intersection change. In regards to making a left, I highly... would not go for that. The original owners that own that ranch, the Bensons, his wife was killed making a left-hand turn, and that was over 70 years ago. So I would not make a left. That is a definite accident waiting to happen. Now, I have walked through that building many a time. And right now, there is very little parking in there. I've walked through there. I can count 10 or 12 cars. So you can't compare apples to apples by currently what's there and what is going to be there. Now, to get out of Hamilton Avenue, the only thing a car could do, because I came back there at 10 o'clock today, and all the traffic was backed up past the driveway. You could wait to make a right in the right-hand turn and then go on Lee as what you had suggested at one time. Then what's gonna happen is you're gonna come down our street, Piccadilly, which is a dead end street, and they're gonna try to make a left. That may or may not happen. In the morning, I can tell you, I leave at 7.30 and it's already backed up. There's people coming from Sheffield, which is the next street down, going in the opposite lane, because there is a slight lane for the Lee and Hamilton building and Piccadilly to get out and make a left. Those people that are gonna wanna make a left, are gonna have a very, very tough time because it's already backed up. I can't even back up. Is that me?

Yeah, I can just finish your thought.

Okay. So traffic is gonna be a nightmare. Even now, for me to get out, I'll go right. And then I'll make a left turn on Cromwell, which is two streets down, and then go down and then come out on Lee Avenue. And that's what people are going to see what they're going to do. They're either going to make a right out of there, of which, let me just add this. About two months ago, I was going to go right. Now, this was rare, but four cars came out of the driveway, one after the other. I couldn't get out at all. and then the signal turn. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, this is what this is gonna be like when this building goes in. Because the only option is for these people to go right and then go down one of the side streets. They're not gonna be able to make a left. That's a fact. It's just the way it's gonna go. Thank you for your comments. Okay, as far as that goes. Now the concern is also- Sorry, we have two minutes per speaker. Oh. But you need to seriously think about the traffic because it will be an accident waiting to happen. And we also need parking permits on our street because everybody's going to come and park on our street. And the tandem garage thing does not work. So people are going to park on the side streets with their other cars. And for 15 guests... I know, just one last thing. When they have parties and stuff, where are they gonna park? They're gonna be parked on all the side streets. This is not the project for that section.

Next speaker.

Cheryl Sinclair from the One Phantom. I'm just gonna ramble a few lists since it's only two minutes. Congratulations on the math, because when I did the math, I think you were, It's supposed to be at 73 units, not 74. But I think the density of it is a problem because that section, like they said, the traffic is very high. You have three schools, the church and the two schools, plus you have eBay. So to add 74 units, which is a minimum of 150 people, how you only get 100 added traffic or whatever that calculation was is beyond me because you have a minimum of 150 people living there going to work. There used to be a thing in the cities where you had to have so much park space per housing. I don't know what happened to that law. I don't know if it's still there, but there are no parks on that side. Now you're adding a minimum 150 people with no place for dogs, no parks. That townhome took all 74 units and there's not one play structure in there. So where did the kids go? Okay. Air conditioning for 74 units. That's got to be super loud for the neighbors really close. Hamilton, after all these years is finally getting redone. Now you're going to have big people on there. And every time I've seen big construction, they've ruined the roadway. So hopefully you put in something where they're going to repave the roadway and make it good. And that right turn on Hamilton, when you turn right onto Lee, everybody uses that as a passing lane. And now you have some 75 to 150 people coming out of that driveway onto that passing lane, which is wrong. How are you going to fix that? Two minutes.

All right.

Do we have any folks who'd like to speak?

Oh, and three stories. My neighbor took three years to get the permit from Campbell to get a foot out into their housing. That's a three stories right next to houses with no permits.

Hello again. I just have a quick question. The trees that are trying to be removed, it looks like tree number, where did the tree number go here? I think it was 233, 234 that are close to the corner of Lee. and hamilton uh if you got rid of some of the bioswale i think some of those trees one or two of them may be able to stay although one's a big camper and then the same on the south side and you were saying i think dan you were saying they were taking the tree the big ones out because of the fire access down there correct i was referring to the new trees that were limited in size but they're taking out the bigger trees because they need the fire access is why you're not keeping any on the south side or the east side.

I mean, I think the development team probably speak more about individual trees.

Okay. I just am looking at the tree and the inventory and the site dimensions, and it just seems like there should be at least two or three of the big ones on the corner that might be able to stay.

Thank you for your comment.

That was Susan Landry for the record.

Next speaker, if you could identify yourself. Thank you for coming tonight.

I'm Jane Stroud. I'm at 442 Nottingham Way. So I'm one of the five or six homes that back up to the parking lot, which we've always loved because it's quiet. But my one concern is the townhouses seem to be very close to our backyard. And I don't know if there's any thought about making a, if we're still gonna have the wall there that's been there forever since they put in the, built that building. And hopefully we don't have to move any trees from our house. The other thing I was curious about as far as parking, Because our street is right behind that and people will be parking on our street more than likely. Is there still a plan or is there a way? Do you have a residential permit only on our street? They did that, I know, on Futrell when Tower Records was there. And so you could park on that street. So a residential permit would be great. Other than that, who knows?

Thank you for your comment. Can I just answer a question on the neighborhood permits? Sure. And Daniel can correct me if I get it wrong. There's only one neighborhood permit. I mean, this comes up all the time. There's only one neighborhood that has a permit in Campbell at the moment. the neighborhood can submit for a neighborhood permit, if I'm not mistaken, that would be done after the completion of the project, right? And so neighborhoods are free to contact the city and request to go through the process of getting neighborhood permit. Whether or not, You know, I think obviously, there's going to be some overflow parking here. Whether or not the city would oblige, I wouldn't I wouldn't be able to tell you but but there's a permit process where you could Okay, good.

Thank you.

I think there's the wall, whatever why I don't know if there's going to be a new wall, there's going to be a wall, the existing wall is going to be retained.

Okay, so the existing wall. Can you comment? Her trees won't get impacted at all.

How tall the wall is going to be?

It's the existing wall height. I think it's indicated as six feet tall. Pardon? Six feet tall.

Oh, that's what it is now.

It's staying. The wall is staying. So the wall will stay.

And her trees aren't getting changed out, correct? Typically, you do not remove off-site trees.

Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Other folks who'd like to speak on this item? Please. Not to reiterate the traffic situation. Could you state your name, too?

My name is Nancy Schrader. I live at 420 Nottingham. And just more on the traffic situation there. It's so bad coming out onto Lee. I mean, Hamilton, I think we've all said that's going to be bad. Coming out onto Lee, you have the school traffic coming out off of Sheffield, too. And that morning with, I'm going to say, all the crazy moms, which we all are, getting your kids in and out of school between 8 and 3. And then on Nottingham at 5 o'clock, everybody's cutting down our street so they don't have to go to Lee. So if it's going to be even worse, it's a nightmare.

Thank you. Let me just see if we have any other any other public comment. Would you like to? Yeah, please. Jim, sorry. No, we'll do you at the end. We got somebody. Hi, I'm Debbie.

I live on Phantom Avenue. How do we request a traffic study? I've heard there's not one done, there doesn't need to be one done, but you've heard several comments made in regards to traffic. And even the current traffic today, you're gonna add 74 more units, which is over 100 people. So I'd like to request that we can find out how to do a traffic study. Thank you.

Thank you.

Can you please repeat your name one more time?

I'm sorry.

Your name?

Debbie.

and staff for we cannot there is no way to request it or require i mean sometimes you know neighborhood associations fund their own traffic studies but there's also a real limitation of what a traffic study is really going to do anyway and the roads are not going to be expanded so even if there are operational impacts there is very little the city can functionally do i mean it really runs contrary to a lot of prevailing policies and and the commonality of

of speakers is that the requirements were not ours. They're mandated from Sacramento pertaining to parking traffic density, correct?

Correct. This is largely a state-driven process. Anyone else in the chamber? I'm going to do the two people on the line and then go back to the applicant at the end. Ken, you want to let the two folks on the line on?

Yeah, Dan Moncier.

Yes. I live off of Peter, sort of near Campbell Avenue. We've been there 23 years, and I guess I see this as this is the least dense project we can possibly get. If we say no to it, we're going to get something denser. And I do like the idea. I raised my kids here and I do like the fact that with some attainable housing, maybe there's a shot that they can be able to stay here. And so anyway, so I'm in favor of it.

Thank you. We have one of the person online.

Hello. Can you hear me? Okay, great.

Hi, yeah, we actually live next door to Jane. Jane just spoke two people ago where she has wonderful trees that protect her property. We're actually the opposite. We have no trees that don't protect our property, and we're concerned of townhouses kind of looking in on us. I'm actually in favor of it as well. I'm not opposed to the townhouses, but I'm just opposed... to the privacy issue. Is there anything that can help us?

Thank you for coming. I'm going to call up Jim Sullivan, who I think may have a comment on your comment there.

Thank you.

Appreciate the time.

Jim Sullivan, back again. So just a couple of things that I'm going to go through that I think some of the speakers had touched upon. Then I'm going to say something that I think that the neighbors are going to like, but I might get fired by my employer. First of all, the daily trips, right? The 150 people or 150 garage spaces. those are the total number of trips throughout the day. So it's like, you know, a single family detached unit is looked at having 10 daily trips, both going out and coming back. What the city and the state is typically most concerned about is not the ones during the afternoon or late into the evening. It's the a.m. peak hour and the p.m. peak hour trips. So that's, you know, when we say it's less than 100, it's less than 100 during the a.m. peak hour. and the PM peak hours, not throughout the whole day. On the park space, I would love to have a park on this site. And if I had the ability to put one, I would do so. We are paying the park in lieu mitigation fee, which is $1.6 million that will come to the city. The wall stays, I think that you guys had already talked about that in the street trees. But to Mr. Wall's comment, so the balconies, I think when we originally were looking at the architecture for this, typically we have second floor and third story balconies. So we removed the third story balconies. And then actually on the second story balconies, we have... I don't know, Daniel, if you recall the, it's a certain thing, maybe my architect can talk about it, but it basically prevents people from, you know, kind of looking out. So it's the screen that we can do. But to my biggest point, what I want to say is I've been a developer for 35 years. As I mentioned, I'm a resident of Campbell, but not just because this is in my home city, because I think it's the right thing to do. And although I'm not required, I'm willing to hire Hexagon Transportation Company. They're the preeminent traffic consultant. and I will have them do a traffic analysis and working with Mr. Ju on that to maximize the safety factor for cars coming in and leaving and we will work with the city to that regard. So I make that commitment on behalf of the developer.

Is there any other questions from the,

Yeah, so, so I appreciate that. And can you, I guess, discuss the fact that if we're going to keep putting the density in, it means you're going to have to change the way the streets work. You may not be able to build more streets or wider streets, but it is going to mean changes. And I'm thinking that could you please have them do their propeller head dots on putting in a dedicated two-way left turn lane at the expense of having only one lane on Lee. And that might screw everyone going by, but it might just save a life for people that are going to be living there.

Yeah, and I don't know this for a fact, maybe Matthew can weigh in on if both Lee and Hamilton those sections are owned by the city. If they're under city of Campbell jurisdiction or...

I think it's San Jose. I'm afraid at least. Hamilton, you can't do any.

Half of Hamilton is San Jose. Yeah, I think so.

But anything within the city's jurisdiction, you know, I mean, that can improve safety, we're willing to look into.

The man of the hour. North of Montemar Way? Lee Avenue is in Campbell. Oh, that's what we need. East of Lee Avenue, the northern half of, actually, east and west of Lee Avenue, the northern half of Hamilton is in San Jose.

Yeah, but even if it were Campbell, I don't think you can do much with Hamilton. It's too big of an artery. But on Lee, the two-way left turn lane, the reason one is so important to me is it provides egress and ingress. To the property. I mean, you don't need it on both sides of the property. You just need one that's safe for everybody and they'll learn to use it because traffic will make them use it. And if Lee is Campbell, then now you can work and see if a two-way left turn lane is a way. Because you've got that extra lane that's the merge lane that everyone uses as a passing lane anyway. And you've got a left turn lane anyway. So extending a left turn lane into a two-way left turn lane, it just feels like maybe there's something there that's just at the cost of paint.

Thank you.

Yeah, so, and I think I mentioned earlier that one of our latter conditions of approval that came to us, you know, as the applicant was to restripe Lee in a certain configuration. But what I would like to do is have, you know, traffic consultants. I mean, you know, Matthew's great, but it's always good idea to have, you know, kind of two heads, you know, thinking about something, come up with something that's good. Can we ask you to write that up and submit that? I'll work with, I mean, it's on public record, but if Daniel wants me to give him something tomorrow or draft something up tonight, I agree to do this. I'm going to do it.

I'm just saying, you know, if you're committed to it, it's like nice to have it.

If my employer won't pay for it, I'll pay for it. How about that? You have my word. Appreciate it.

And I got to tell you, you just changed my vote with that for what it's worth.

Adam, I did have a question for the applicants of different topic. I noticed that you said that you originally lied in early 2025. And so it's been a year and changed to get to your first hearing. What, in your opinion, was the main source of how long that took? Was it negotiating with fire? Yeah, it

That was the link Daniel is terrific probably the best planner. Well, a lot Stephen's good too, but Daniel's my favorite. And he's just very efficient. Did I get myself in trouble by saying that? He's very efficient. He's very good at what he does. There's the probably the biggest, and you know, we're trying to come up with a product that we think is going to be very, you know, a good word. I think we went through a total of four submissions on this project, right? And the city responded, by the way, after the submission, because it was an SB 330, within 30 days, every single time, but we wasted, I'm not gonna say wasted, there was about four months hold up with Santa Clara County Fire Department. And it's not because the individual there is bad or doesn't like us. I think he's just extremely overworked. And so you send something to him that's maybe a 30-minute conversation, and he's like, you know, we can talk in three weeks.

Thanks.

Thank you for writing that by me. It's all I have. And if I could just quickly comment on the fire thing. Strictly speaking, so what's happening is that these projects aren't code compliant. They just don't meet the strict letter of the fire code. So the fire department is actively working with the development community to find ways to make these projects work. So it is an elongated process because the alternative would just be to say no, and then we don't have any project at all. That's kind of what's happening there too.

Yeah, if I can just do a quick add-on because Daniel brought up a good point. So essentially when you're building three-story product, right, which is very popular for today's new home buyer and creates the density that cities are looking for, essentially you have to have, if you can have your roof line at 30 feet or below, you're golden, you're good to go. The problem is, is it would be a very plain looking building. So you can tell by our architecture, you know, we kind of have some pop-ups that kind of go up a little bit. We're trying to create something that we think is more beautiful that meets a lot of the MFDDS requirements. But unfortunately, every single time you go over 30 feet, the fire department says we can't access the roof from that point right there, but you can, you know, on all of these other points. And so it's like, how much of the building, that roof line, do you have to have? And we try to get at least 50% of the building at 30 feet below. And so that was kind of the holdup and the work together with Santa Clara County Fire to come up. It was truly a means to create a more beautiful product.

Okay, and just so I understand about the fire codes that you're speaking about, are the county codes, correct? It's a state fire code that's adopted locally. Okay, so when the state mandates all these requirements for housing and then says you can't do traffic, you can't do parking, and you can't do density, why would they omit a critical element necessary for every approval that is this noncompliant rep?

Well, I mean, there are discussions in California and other states are looking how to reform building and fire codes because they are presenting a very practical challenge to housing developments. That's true. So some states are making more progress than we are.

But like, it would seem to me that if you were making this legislative act to increase housing, to trade the latter requirement for more impervious structures. You know, you would require materials, you would require things that would make it less necessary to get on the roof to begin with. That would seem to me part and parcel of this swath of legislation that makes it ministerial for our approvals on these things. That's where I capture that question. Do you know about why they would omit this piece of the legislative burrito when there's a half a dozen laws that pertain to all this, and this is on every single project?

So I'll jump in. I mean, obviously, Campbell planning staff can't answer that question. That's a question for the state. So, I mean, you have multiple interests. If you look at the legislative process, you have multiple interests at multiple time trying to achieve things. Obviously, there's a big push towards housing. How those reconcile with other codes and if they get in the way with it isn't always reconciled. So I don't think Campbell planning staff can help you on that, but that would have to be something that happens at the state level.

And I would add, I mean, there have been hearings at the state level on reforming fire code and building code, but there is a lot of resistance from firefighters, really, because they see any challenges or limitations to the fire code as creating a safety hazard.

I agree. And the comments are not to make it your problem. It's so that the people who came here tonight to speak understand how much of this is coming out of Sacramento and putting us all in this impossible circumstance And I want them to understand where the frustration should lay so they don't bring it to you guys, bring it to us, bring it to the city council where nothing can be done about it.

If I can add just one more thing, Mr. Chair, it kind of pertains to traffic. So I know a number of the commissioners were here back in 2023 when the housing element was adopted. And there was an environmental impact report that was done concurrently with that. And there were three or four items. They look at everything, you know, acoustics, biology, greenhouse gas emissions, traffic being one of them. And traffic was listed as an item potentially with significant impact that could not be mitigated. It requires an EIR to be done if you have that finding. and what and it's not for this site i mean i think that the city you know gp or gpa you know 70 properties right and there's some areas that traffic in the old standard of level of service are currently like at a d or an e and they're only going to get worse right um but the council in order to get the housing element approved to create the number of units that they needed to create by the state had to do a vote of overriding consideration. So they basically said, you know, even if it can't be mitigated, we still need the housing. Basically, the housing is of higher priority. And I'm not saying that that's right. That's why I'm willing, particularly from a safety standpoint, to hire Hexagon and work with the city to see what, if anything, else can be done.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks so much. With that, I will close the public hearing. And we're going to discuss this as a commission. Why don't we start with Commissioner Zisser?

Well, first of all, I appreciate everybody who, the residents coming tonight and Ms. O'Connell wrote a very complete, very complete uh concern about about uh about the this this project and how it impacts the neighborhood um uh you get a couple things wrong but that's minor things about when it's not a it's not a uh a light rail project in terms of being close to light rail. There's nothing in this project that relates to the high density near light rail that . But that's a minor thing. I was very impressed with your write up. I think we answered some of your questions. The problem we have here is that the state has all these laws that they've passed in the last four or five years that override most of what the city can do to either reject or change the project as long as the developer meets the requirements of the law. So we actually can ask very little of these kind of projects. And as Daniel said, it's like this could be, this in the future, a project like this could actually never reach the Planning Commission. It would be ministerially approved by the Planning Department. We understand your concerns. We've actually heard it many times before. Traffic, parking, egress, ingress, too tall. These are all things that we've seen before. And this is the nature of what's happening. I would argue with Jim as to whether or not the three-story townhomes are popular with people. They're popular with people because those are the things that are available to buy. and the developers have decided that these are what we can put up, get the most out of, in terms of square footage. I'm personally not a big, I'm a three-story townhomes, but, and I've said that before. It's like, why would somebody like me want to walk up two stairways? So, but that's the fact is that they're allowed to build three-story townhomes next to one or two-story neighborhoods. single-family neighborhoods. That's been going on now. We have many projects in progress around the city, and they're going on all over the state. I appreciate Jim's willingness to take a look at the traffic problem. I think that's a great thing. He's a very cooperative developer here in the city. He's done a number of projects I'm less impressed with the look of this one because it's just everything in line. But what are you going to do? You had to get 74 in there. because that was the situation. So I'm going to vote in favor of the project. It meets the requirements. We don't really have an option to reject it. If we were to reject it, and they would appeal it, and if either the council could object, to it or approve it. But the fact is, is that leaves us open for us to be sued by either developer or the state for that matter. Because we're not allowing something that is has to be allowed for the state law. So I understand all the concerns I actually drive down Hamilton all the time. And I know that area very well. And I have concerns about the traffic issues. But the fact is, is that this is going to go in and then we'll see what the problem is and how serious it is. We've seen the tandems before. I don't like tandem parking, but that's the way it is. It's allowed. And people argue, well, people aren't going to use the entire garage. Well, we can't speculate on and tell people whether they should use their entire garage or not for the two. The HOA could stipulate that. There is going to be an HOA, and they're going to have rules about where you can park. where you can't park. That's probably one of the good things about an HOA. There's other things that aren't so good. So I would suspect that there's gonna be leak over into the neighborhoods again, not much we can do about that we'll see what happens and again i encourage people to um once this is done if you feel that there's a problem in your neighborhood that you contact the city and see about getting a permit for your neighborhood that's all i have thank you commissioner concar

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I share many of the points that my colleague said. First of all, I think it's very good design given what they have. I think the civil engineer and the architect did a great job with all the limitations that they have on the field. the number of units that they had to produce, and the way they've laid it. I know it looks like a row housing, but at least there's structure to it. It would be easy to navigate, especially during times of emergency if you have to get out. easy way to get out. The only items I don't like is the tandem parking. But again, I understand this is the product that it has to be sellable after it's built. Otherwise, the developer would not build it. And we're just in an era where this is where the tire meets the road. You have to make a distance, you have to make it taller. um i actually like the three stories you know i think um it would allow you you know hopefully you're using solar panels you know on your groups you know to help with the energy um when you are taller that means you have a little bit more green space than you would have had you not been taller you know and so would have a bigger footprint so those are all positive to me and um I would be supportive, especially when I heard a commitment from Mr. Sullivan that he will sanction a traffic study. That's the Mr. Sullivan that I know.

So kudos. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Halmy. For the people in the audience and the comments, I'd just like you to know that I live in a house I was raised in on Ridgely. And I came here to the Planning Commission because I didn't like what I was seeing in my city. And I didn't want it to become overbuilt like too many East Coast cities with all the density and all the problems that you can't solve. But I'm also here to tell you that we have a choice between writing a check after we get sued and saying yes, or suffering a reduction in the quality of life because we said yes. and the only solace and the reason i'm going to vote yes for this is because jim is a very good developer and you would be horrified at what could go there and that's the best i can tell you commissioner bookbinder thank you um just gonna

Note that I live in a three-story townhome. I'm raising my daughter in a three-story townhome next to a bunch of other families who live in three-story townhomes. Not everybody can afford a detached single-family home here. We're very lucky to have that. And so I don't think this is, I think I don't have the same visceral reaction to it that people who do not live in three-story townhomes have. I will also, if it helps, note that my HOA spends the vast majority of its effort enforcing its draconian parking rules on the people who live in my complex. There's not really much to say about this, given that our authority is very constrained here. Thank you to everybody who came in to let us know how they feel about it. The project is as it is. I think we're lucky that Mr. Sullivan is willing to be extra accommodating to people. I think he's very much valuing the goodwill of the community. I hope the community returns that.

That's all I have. Thank you. like similar comments to the rest of the commissioners. Thank you for speaking here tonight. I appreciate everybody who came to participate in the process. But like we've been saying, this is a pretty limited set of things we could object to. And parking and traffic are not some of these things, like Commissioner Kamkar said. I found our city very responsive when problems develop, whether it's trash, whether it is traffic sort of limitations. So please just get in touch with the city if these things develop for the projects. And then I would echo the comments about the developer. We don't say this about most developers, but Jim Sullivan does show up and generally seem to care. So the one commenter who said he was curious about maybe having a tree in his backyard at I think I heard you offer that's something you may do. So he put his email address up. But if you're still on the line, I think you might get a free tree out of this. So get in touch. But supportive of this project, again, sort of maybe less draconian than yours. if we don't approve housing we lose all control and this easily could be at some point a 10-story building where the traffic impacts would just be monstrous um we have a big Target I think this meaningfully moves us towards it it's a nice project doesn't feel sort of crazy out of character with the area so I am supportive of it uh with that I will ask for a motion on this item

anticipating it's commissioner zisser the motion man i'm sorry i'd like to make a motion that the planning commission adopt a resolution approving a minor housing development project permit and tentative vesting subdivision map to allow the construction of a 74 unit housing development project specifically pln 2025-55. second second i just sorry oh please don't want to get in the way of this no no knowing uh

The applicant developer has put on the table the traffic request.

Yeah.

Clearing the record, you might want to just put in your motion acknowledging that so it's clear that's a commitment that you've put forward. Do you want to amend the motion to that? Thanks.

Acknowledging that the developer has offered to provide a traffic study.

Second. Second. Thank you, Rob. Now can we get a roll call vote?

Commissioner Scissorhands? Aye. Commissioner Kamkar.

Aye. Commissioner Allen. Aye. Commissioner Buchmeier. Aye. Chair Fields. Aye. The motion passes with a 5-0 vote. Planning Commission action is final unless appealed in writing to the city clerk within 10 calendar days. The next up is subcommittee reports, but why don't we do a three-minute break prior to that? Sound good? We're going to take a three-minute break.

That's not why I did it, but there it is.

All right, we're ready. We're back. Moving on to the third item, staff and committee reports, planning commission subcommittee reports. Up first, the housing permit streamlining ad hoc subcommittee with commissioners Bookbinder and Kavkar.

Thank you, everyone. So I would like to thank everybody for having read the write-up that I sent there. I will note that we had a meeting with staff, specifically with planner Steven Rose and Rob. And we have, again, so... We have, again, refined our plan. So what I would like to do is run the plan by everybody and go over each of the four proposed policies, have a brief discussion about what we'd like, take sort of a straw poll, get the sense of the committee, so we'll have something actually written up at the next meeting that we can vote on. And then hopefully, no one will be surprised and horrified by it. So for context here, The problem we're trying to solve is obviously we are under building housing. We'd like to build more. Our constraints are that the city is very short on revenue, especially given the Measure K being an escrow issue. And we're very short on staff time. I think we're supposed to have five and a half FTE. We have two FTE. So I'd like to thank staff for meeting with us. Their time is very, very short. so given this we are trying to propose things that will not cost any money and will take as minimal staff time as possible preferably like changing one number in the city code to a different number in the city code that's it so four proposals we have um i'm gonna go over these and then we'll talk about each one of them first uh make minor housing project permits administrative and major permits terminate at the planning commission now these would still be appealable but this would make minor housing project permits ministerial, which would cut about two months off the approval time, which is really significant for people. I think to quote staff in this package, the commission's review is limited by state law, including HAA and related housing laws, which generally restrict the city's ability to nigh reduce the density of qualifying housing development project. Basically, if you've been wondering why we kind of do this, go around when there's nothing we can actually change about it. It's because the city does this, the city could decide not to do that, especially given that none of these things have ever been appealed. Staff is, as I understand it, on board with moving everything down one level. So things that go here will now be administrative. Things that go to the city council will now terminate here. They can still be appealed up. We are not losing any discretion because we didn't really have discretion in the first place. Um, Second, adjust our inclusionary housing rates to match San Jose's. Now San Jose had a very similar problem to what we have. They had a lot of, they could build townhomes, but stacked flat proposals had been applied for, but due to changing economic circumstances were stuck. They asked, how can we unstick these? They reduced fees and they reduced inclusionary zoning rates. And they have, as far as I can tell, unstuck things. I am currently in the process of trying to get in touch with somebody from the planning department in San Jose to see how this worked, empirically they've had a lot of success with this so there's two ways we can go with this i would recommend we go with a more flexible way um so what their ordinance says For rental units, you can do 10%, half at 80% AMI, half at 60%. You can do 7% of them at 50% AMI or 5% at 30% AMI, which is like extremely low income. All those, like you can do your density bonus, sorry, you can do your inclusionary zoning in any of those ways. I believe those all actually do get you state density bonus, which is what most developers really care about. For sale, it's only 10% at 120% AMI. And all of these only apply to 20 or greater unit projects. I have a lot of... sources on places that have been pulling back their inclusionary zoning ordinances. I will note that the reason why our rate is 15%, this was, as far as I can tell, implemented in 2006 and is 15% because that is the highest number you can do before the state makes you actually justify it with a nexus study. That is also what San Jose had and they found it to be restrictive. So, Third, state law requires that we exempt ADUs under 750 square feet from park fees. In the interest of fairness, we have a local density microunit program. This would also exempt those units which are similarly small from park fees. And lastly, I'm aware that the council recently announced vigorously rejected SHRA projects. Those are the starter homes, the SB 1123 projects. But given that SB 79 will be in effect the next time we meet. Yeah, July 1st. Allowing streamlining for SHRA projects that is concurrent demolition and construction permitting in the SB 79 areas only, wouldn't be you can have single family homes or we're trying to put town homes there. It's you can have stacked flats there or you can have town homes there.

Just one second. I just want to make sure everybody knows what we're talking about when you say SB 79. So you could build five to seven stories by right. You don't need to go change zone in general. Yeah.

And you don't need to, you know, get the demolition permit or you just need, you can just buy the parcel and do that. this would just remove the extra step to build townhomes in the regions where you can already buy right, build large stack plots projects. So those are the four items. I would very much like the sense of the commission on, start with the first one, moving the discretion down one level so that minor housing project permits are administrative and major housing permits projects are go to the Planning Commission instead.

Can I make a macro thing first? Sure. I think when we do this, what I need to see is the data, which is like in the last five years, how many of each of those were there?

Absolutely. How long have we had this project definition? It hasn't been five years, right? Since about 2003?

It's been since adoption of the housing element, which would be spring of 2023. So approximately three years.

Okay, three years. But... So like just to say them for each of these of like the data, because I don't know that I could actually tell you at this moment whether I support any of these absent some data. So like the first one would be, what are we really talking about? And then like what we did for the permit streamlining is we married that with like the public comment to say, Because remember, when we did that, we streamlined just the uses, this is before your time, based on no negative public comment. So what I want to know for this one is, are we removing a forum at which people did still, even if we couldn't approve it, they felt heard, they learned some stuff, they got a developer offer? So that one, it'd be useful to know. For the second one, inclusionary zoning, City comps like San Jose's. Can we do one of these? We can go one at a time. I basically have the same macro comment on all of them. Absent that, I can't in good conscience really say yes to any of them or send any of them on.

But we can go one at a time. I would rather do it together myself. Oh, okay, sure. Just if everybody can remember what all four of those were, I'm happy to remind them.

Traditionally, the chair goes last, but if you want to go through your... No, no, no. I'm saying I'll wait until the end of all four. My comments are global, and I reiterate.

There's only three of us that aren't on the subcommittee, too.

However we want to do this, I may be over-organizing.

I'm assuming Matt is in line with you.

Absolutely. Are you okay if I keep going, then? Yeah. All right. So for the second one, inclusionary zoning, The other cities around us, what do they do? Like, you know, Cupertino and Los Gatos, like, what's their inclusionary zoning? And then just netting out, like, what do we think the net impact of is this towards our housing or our fees? Like, what are we actually swapping here to do it? Like, back of the envelope, I think is okay, but... I don't know at first blush what this would do to arena numbers, for example.

Yeah, the basic idea here is we'll try and see what San Jose's permitting looked like before and after January of this year. As I understand, they had a lot of stuck projects which got unstuck, which is kind of what we have. There's a reason why... The project that's, it's not even an inclusionary zoning project, but the Winchester project is stuck. The project, the Del Grande project is stuck. Pretty much any stacked flat project in the city is stuck. So if I will attempt to net that out, and the conclusion is pretty much gonna be 10% of something is a lot better than 15% of nothing.

That's the bottom line. That's the thing is you can put a set of rate.

Does the lower number get them unstuck?

Yeah. Well, that's the data point. So that's what we're going to be looking at. I like seeing reports that said San Jose really did this and it worked out, but obviously I'm trying to get in touch with somebody from planning there. But the, yeah, I will try to, quantify the trade-off involved, like, yes.

There is somebody online, so whatever point you want to allow public comment on the item, just let him know.

Okay. Well, let me know when is a good time for that.

Why don't we all go and...

Okay. Okay, the person online, hopefully they can wait a bit.

For the third one... The ADU exemptions. The ADU, well... Sorry, the micro-unit exemptions. Micro-unit exemptions... It would be this again, would be very back of the envelope. But just trying to quantify, like, how many units would this have impacted up till now? Or, you know, from a couple of developer conversations, how many future looking ones and like, roughly, what are we talking about in park fees, because it seems like this one is basically a direct trade off of, we think this might boost our housing number at the expense of park fees. But I don't know what the exchange rate is. So yeah, it's hard in the U.S. Yeah. So it's difficult in again in isolation to be like, well, of course we should do this because I don't I don't know, like, you know, how big is this relative to like the park fees that we generate? And then the last one, I guess on the last one, maybe not a data question. The council was pretty firm. The city was pretty firm. I don't quite understand. Like, are you, what are you saying from, like, a policy perspective?

So, first off, the city was not pretty firm. 40 people who showed up were pretty firm. The city council was full on.

The city council was firm, and the 40 people who showed up, like, the, okay, so what The body that were the advisory body to voted for one on it.

So I'm, like, I'm trying to understand what the The underlying thing that they voted for was we don't want Sacramento dictating that we have building in our city. Amen. So I'm saying we can decide that Sacramento may say that they want to put four to six story buildings in there, but we can also say, hey, you could build townhomes, which are a gentler form of density. I realized everybody was torches and pitchforks about townhomes, but boy, if you think they were mad about that.

Maybe it's just how it's written. As I look at this, it's written In a way, I don't understand what we're trying to allow.

Okay. In the area where SB 79 applies, that's around our train stations. As of July 1st, you can build a stacked flat apartment building, four to six stories, I believe. Right. In that area. Five to seven. It's five to seven. Sorry, five to seven. In that area, we're saying if you can already do that, you should also be able to do the concurrent permitting to make it easier to build townhouses.

And how does this relate to the simultaneous demolition that I think was... That's the thing.

That's the streamlining. So we would allow simultaneous demolition and construction permitting, which is what allowed those projects to be feasible. That's the grease that makes this.

Does SB 79 allow demo and construction permitting of the tall things?

So you can get your building. I actually don't understand how permitting works in this sense, but. the problem the thing that makes shra projects difficult to do is that you can't get your building permit unless it's a vacant site and i think you can't get a construction loan until you get your building permit but if you buy the land you can get a building permit for it and demolishing the structure is prerequisite for that but you don't have you can sp79 projects cannot only be built on vacant that's why this is actually again sp79 projects do not require the lot to be vacant

They could, they don't need, I mean, they would need the demolition permit, but those are not hard to get. It's not impossible for them to say, oh, no, no, you cannot take out this structure. They can take out the structure so they can build five to seven stories.

I think maybe it's just then the way it's framed, unless I'm misinterpreting it, because the way you're framing it is basically like, hey, SB 79, instead of the monoliths, we want to let people build townhomes just as easily. But it's sort of addressed in this thing that sort of became a third rail issue for the city.

Can I get educated on this particular point? So my understanding was that

demolition permit was not an automatic approval when an existing structure was present on the property am i is that changed so so just to frame this we're talking about starter homes yeah and just in the sb 79 areas you starting july 1st uh buck hunter's right you in a single family district that's in sb 79 you have have variety options but you could do an sp79 project which allows you to do up to you know 80 units per acre if you can assemble the parcels you can elect to do that city has to approve it uh per the starter homeowners separately these you don't have to mix these together you can do a starter home project which is up to 10 units on one property the action that's been coming before council is the city can't deny star health projects must allow them if it meets all the standards that what's been the rub and discussion with city council is the vacancy required. State law says the property must be vacant acknowledging that in this city, anyone who owns property can apply for or obtain a building permit to demolish a house and render it vacant. Our original ordinance said it didn't have to be vacant when you apply. You could demolish the house during the process.

Okay, but when you use the word vacant, you mean free of structure, not empty of occupancy.

Yeah, vacant can mean two things. the plain definition, no structures on the property, or a structure that's been, I'll use the term, red-tagged by the billing official. So it's uninhabitable.

But unoccupied.

Yeah, it cannot be occupied.

It's deemed uninhabitable. That's the term, deemed uninhabitable. Well, but that's where the rub, because I don't have an opinion about this. I'm trying to understand that a property owner couldn't purchase a property that had an existing structure in compliance that was occupied and then evict the occupant, apply for the demolition permit in conjunction with a mandated approval and be off to the races?

Okay, let me make sure I understand this. You could buy a property that's occupied by – actually, there are protections for tenants on properties. I don't have all the details before you, but if you own a property that is tenant-occupied, there are protections given to tenants. What if it's owner-occupied? If it's owner-occupied, those protections don't exist.

So that's where the rub was. You're removing a unit from the housing stock to replace it with higher density housing. And the wrench in the works was the denial of the demolition permit. And this removes that wrench in the works ministerially, correct?

I think the intent was to streamline the process, knowing rather than buy a property, life or demolition permit, demolish it, come back. There could be blight. The developer could walk away if you have blighted properties and then do a starter home project. The intent originally was to put that on.

Yeah, but the fireworks was over. When you make this an act of ministerial approval, then it's more easily abused. And I'm trying to wrap my head around where does the form of abuse that we should be cautioned about in this steamroller of events, because the end result is very high density housing.

Well, again, there's two buckets. Bucket here, starter home allows up to 10 units, housing, family property, that's generally townhomes. Qualify that as high density or not, that's up to you. State generally does it. SB 79 allows very high density. I think most folks would agree with that. It's a stacked flat project up to 75 units per acre.

And the only thing stopping that was the demolition permit, correct?

No, no. For the starter homes, the question is, how do you get to the process of demolition? So at this point, the council has given direction that you would have to render the property vacant to start. So today, you could come in, buy a property, apply for a demolition permit, render the property vacant, apply for a starter home project. There are other ways to do that. They've given us direction to come back with a Demolition Control Ordinance that says if you come in and apply for a permit to demolish a home, you can't render it vacant. You have to replace it with another home or a student.

And we're waiting on some state HUD advice. At the end of this work, as well-intentioned as it is, I don't want to go back and present to the City Council like we're not listening.

Right. The idea here is that City Councils direction was we don't want big projects and more homes the state is meant where the state is mandating that we accept bigger projects and more homes we're providing off-ramp or still more homes but maybe not as high density the city council should go for that um but I think that requires me to gently sell it.

But I read your proposal suggesting that we go back to what we had done with regards to the ordinance and re-allow this to happen, bypassing the vacancy requirements. Yeah, in light of- I understand, but I'm not convinced that we really understand the implications of SB 79. In theory, they could go into, because it's in the half mile radius, go into a street in downtown here, buy up multiple properties, and put up a five-story building right here, right next door in the downtown single-family neighborhoods. That's in theory. Now, I'm not convinced that that's what developers are going to do. I think what they're going to do is buy up stuff like, you know, where we have light industrial, you know, on the edge of town, you know, like by Railroad Avenue and Selmar, and where there's a whole bunch of mishmash of properties, and buy all those properties and potentially put up a seven story place, okay, not necessarily in a single family neighborhood. Okay, now we're at risk. of it being in a single family neighborhood because of the radiuses, we're disproportionately affected because we've got three light rail stations that if you do that half mile radius, it covers all of downtown, including the neighborhoods and the Winchester, Budd, Rincon area, because of that station. And so that neighborhood is affected. There may be even some other, as well as the south end of downtown area, too. So in theory, there could be these big, big big buildings. But I don't know if, and I don't know if what we're saying we're doing can be in lieu of 79 requirements. Does this block them from doing it? If we write a, it doesn't block them. So we say, you can do this, but it's not really going to matter. Is 79 still going to be implemented? So why would we do it All it seems to me is that we're going back and exacerbating this thing with putting up to 10 units in a single family neighborhood without really blocking SB 79.

We're providing an alternative, but I do agree. This is the only thing we can do. If city council says we don't want more density, we can't obviously refuse to apply with SB 79. What we can do is provide an alternative for developers.

I think the developers that are putting in 10 units are not the same developers that are building seven-story buildings, I don't think. To me, it's a different circumstance in terms of the developers.

It is, but it's the same parcels of land.

I understand, but it's not the same kind of people that are getting involved and doing that development, as far as I could tell.

What was lost in this conversation is we need two units.

You know, you're coming up with, you know, I don't think we need to produce units by any means. This is my philosophical position. I don't think we need to produce units by any means by going into single family neighborhoods and converting them into six plexes, eight plexes and 10 plexes in the middle of the neighborhood. We have plenty of places where we can build units. We're not going to meet the RENA, no matter what we do. I know that sounds negative, but I knew this the moment we finished the element. There was no way we were going to meet 2,900 units in Campbell in eight years. We are at... the three-year mark, right? And we've got 250 units, 300 units? I mean, come on. The number is unattainable, OK? And now, 79 gives some opportunity if they're going to build these big buildings near the light rail. But the math doesn't really work in terms of time frame. We're almost halfway through the cycle. And all we got is a few 100 units. Okay. And by the way, Adam, it wasn't 100 units. It wasn't 100 units in the in the as a result of the of the the starter homes. Half of them were on multi-use zone, which is not an issue. Those eight or seven or eight of them were on multi-use zoning, and those are going through. They're not single family homes. There's seven, used to be eight. One's got withdrawn. Seven of them total 56. Okay, so it's not 100. You keep saying 100. Okay, it's not 100. Okay. Everywhere you write, you say 100. Okay. So the point I'm trying to make is I don't see us doing this to negate SB 79. And all it does is create this additional, potentially devastating thing to single family neighborhoods. I think we need to, you know, we're supposed to be able, the option of writing, I saw on, wherever I saw it, a summary of SB 79 where the city has an option to write a plan.

Yes, an Eck House plan would cost several hundred thousand dollars, and I think the city is a little hesitant to do that given our budget.

Well, considering what SB 79 could do,

We would just be moving density here to there. We'd have even higher density in some places. When you say you don't want it in the single family neighborhoods, we don't have that much that's not single family neighborhoods, which is kind of why this happens. And the single family neighborhoods are right next to the train station. So I think this discussion has got a little broader here.

Well, anyway, I'm very uncomfortable with that whole area. I'm a little bit more comfortable with reducing the percentages.

Okay.

From 15% to 10%. That would be only on rentals? It would be both on rentals and for sale.

I'm more comfortable with that. I think I can bridge this up. Yeah, bridge our gap. Okay, so I'm hearing both of you, and I'm agreeing with both of you, which is impossible. Yeah, really. But my opinion is that this off-ramp idea, I don't know, we've got to come up with a phrase for it. I believe that every one of those that gets built will not become high rise because they're going to go find a cheaper piece of dirt to put the high rise on. So in that way, every one of these off ramps is a little bit of help from what could be a terrible disaster as much as I don't like it. So I think in that, you know, there might be a good way to bridge it. Now, what I'll say to you is, as much as you're right about the whole place being filled with single family houses, that to the neighbor somebody who just invested a lot of money and just saw 10 to 30 percent of the value walk away because we had to do what we had to do and i just don't like seeing victimization of neighbors this you know for a city-wide problem now i don't have an answer But I'm just saying I'm very sensitive to that and why I don't like to see that to somebody who's just living their life. And next thing you know, ta-da, you got no choice. Here you go. If you don't like it, move. Here's your capital gains and get out. That's just not how you should treat people who have contributed to the community. And you saw them here today for 50 years. Well, sorry, we need your house. Get out. You can either join them, make some money, or just sit next to a deck overlooking your pool. I just don't like it.

I understand. There's something to be said for stability. And if somebody grew up here and everything was the same for 70 years, it's going to be pretty shocking when things change.

And change is OK, but this isn't incremental.

I think it's kind of like we've pulled the rubber band back for the last 30 years and the situation has gotten worse and worse.

But tell that to the one guy. Now, we should all suffer the snap, not the guy who just got picked until we hit 2,000 units or whatever we're going to get to.

If you think it's bad to live next to a townhouse, I have to live inside one. Can you imagine how terrible that is? No, I'm talking – but you chose that. The guy next to you didn't.

So just maybe going back to your original point. Yes. I think I'm with Zisser. I hate to say that. Commissioner Zisser. douché i'm interested in i'm interested in one in your one through three i'm interested in them contingent on data and city cops of like not just san jose like what are our other local cities doing um to to make a recommendation that i would feel like was backed by data i i'm also uncomfortable sort of wandering into four because it feels like something we need to be very intentional about. So I don't know if there's a way you can write what the proposal is or explain like how we're thinking about it in the context of all the public comment. But like that one at the moment, I don't feel comfortable making a recommendation on barring some rewrite or revision that makes it clear.

We basically be throwing chum to the public.

Right, which doesn't like a little chum. So like I would not, given the volume that we've seen and that we're an advisory board to the council, I wouldn't be supportive of that. No, that's fair.

So let's move off of item four. So does anybody have any particular objections to, or I think that's a great idea for changing the level of discretion pending, like looking back at the last- I do, yeah.

Yeah, so I have the two comments I had when I made them as I just read everything were, on the one hand, All these suffer from, I'd like something about all of these to talk about where the public input would be when we have ministerial changes. You know, when we go from discretionary to ministerial, I really don't like the closing of the democratic door where people can't address their government because we've removed the forum by passing it to ministerial. So every one of these, I would like there to be a comment about where the public goes issue its grievances if there are any um there aren't any i totally agree with you that's well i know but i'm not i'm in favor of the work because i i get like i'll i'll take the deal i gotta take as best i can with this off ramp and this stuff even though if i had my way i wouldn't do any of it But in the middle of taking that deal, because I got to take it, I don't want to mute the public if I don't have to. And so that's my comment, too. Is there a place for that in these?

So I think the public does get notified. People nearby do get notified. They can absolutely contact the developer. They can request an appeal. It's not like they can't contact anything. The reason why staff has talked about this, the reason why I think it's counterproductive sometimes to have these discussions is that people show up understandably thinking this is a place to bring my ideas and so forth, but to hear we can't do anything about that.

But I think that's a failure of government to not properly educate the public on how and where to get their say in.

And if I can address that, these laws come from state, right? Who are the state people? They are the former local city council people that have gone on and become state representative. It's the same people that used to represent Cambo and San Jose. So those are the guys that go up and go to state and then from a state, they look at the problem and they go, we got to do something. And they full well know what Campbell is like, because they used to be the former mayor and council member and planning commissioner for Campbell before they went up. One guy. Well, no, no, it's not just one guy. There's more people.

That's what you're talking about.

You're talking about one guy. But if you look at the vote. But if you get the vote of that one guy, that one guy is supporting all these laws. I understand that. Because there's a problem to be solved.

The point we were talking about was about whether or not the public still gets an opportunity to hear. And I can't believe I'm saying this. I totally agree with Phil. I feel like I deserve that. So, yeah, that's where, you know, my, and I mentioned it again tonight, my problem has been the major and minor thing that we have this, I assume the city decided this is major and minor. Major is five acres, 700 feet. Okay. That's really large for Campbell. okay five acres and 700 feet there's like two there's like two developments we will see if you probably in the last four years okay so i would prefer we we move minor drop it down or drop it up, drop it down to a major drop it down so that, you know, it includes, I personally believe that Virginia Avenue, this one, I don't know if Llewellyn was a major or minor, but there's a lot of ones where they're 40, 50, 60, 80 units or even 100 units that are considered minor, which would be totally ministerial. And I have a problem with No offense, leaving it up to Rob and Daniel to just decide this is okay.

We're not deciding whether it's okay.

Of course they are.

They're going over and seeing if it's okay. We are not deciding if it's okay.

I know we're not deciding, but I just have a problem with there not being an opportunity. I also have a problem with the fact that we don't get to see it early. And I don't know if we can do anything different about that. But I would prefer, ideally, to see the bigger projects, not as big as the ones that we say are big. to be able to look at them early. It's only one meeting. They keep talking about we have a limit of five meetings, so I don't know where the other four meetings are.

Sign up for the DRC emails. When new projects come in, you can get a copy of the plans and everything. I'm signed up for those. I'm on the commission.

I want to see it in a public forum.

We're debating this like we're about to vote on it. I just want to get out my... No, no, but it's like we're going to come back.

I have a sense of the commission that this is... My sense of this is that this is... Like, there is some support for this, but it is also somewhat controversial. And the thing that some people want is to make sure that people have some form to voice their grievances, whether or not anybody is forced to act on them.

Well, even if you tell them it's at Sacramento. I don't have a problem telling them your fight is with Sacramento.

Right.

But tell them, you know, get it out there more.

The vast majority of people that come in here don't know anything about this. And at the very least, we're educating.

Yeah.

Okay. And so the other thing I want to make sure I included is, you know, reading through your thing, you obviously spend a lot of time on. uh and i i understand there's a fair amount of editorialism in there that i would not approve of when you start talking about we should be doing a partial tax instead i i don't want to be involved in recommending a partial tax instead that's your editorializing your personal opinion about how that should be fixed i i just i'm uncomfortable with seeing those kind of

Absolutely noted. When I bring this to around next time, it will be a lot shorter and be stripped down to pretty much just the facts and supporting data.

Can I get my other lick in for the other point? Sure. Okay. This one might help you. So, you know, I'm in the middle of this scenario that we're doing. I'm really sensitive to what happens to the neighboring property owners and the community at large, specifically with the parking, the traffic, and the things you can get no say about anymore. But when we build new units to get new people in here, people are gonna do what people do, and all these things that are concerns about them going places, driving, going to work, it might be better for the other subcommittee, but I think this whole, work from home ought to be fully embraced to the extent necessary because hand in hand with the crisis that says we need units ought to be the crisis. We got to let people live in the least impactful way for the city and neighbors possible. So if it's a personal services business, ministerial approval, absolutely. You know, you, you, whatever you do in your house and I love the idea of, you know, only two customers, clients, whatever, at a time in your house, whatever. Seems sensible. Should go to the permit streamlining community. Totally. And just say, you know, you get to do that because that means there's no traffic impact. And what a blessing that is to mitigate what is construction. So we should say we want you to come work from home in our city because if you don't, you come here and work somewhere else and there's all the trouble.

I would be wondering how many people actually have a home occupation permit to do homework anyway. So I don't know. I never even heard.

Away from what was agendized. There we go. Thank you.

Do you have what you need now? I have one more quick. So I just need to get all the opinions on the inclusionary zoning percentages.

I think you guys are the right guy doing the right work and I want to encourage the fact that you're doing it because it's pretty thankless and I appreciate it.

Thank you. That's a good call and I should have acknowledged that as well. Thank you for doing the work. We jumped into the

question oh absolutely absolutely i um i will do as much homework as is required just to fix this thing all right um lastly i just have the adu um the micro units under 700 square feet you said you wanted to see some modeling of how that would impact is there any other things that people would like to see or objections or i think this is a good idea I need the number to know if it's a good idea. That's absolutely valid. That is all I need. Let me just make really sure I have everything. Can I just really quick run this back to make sure nobody has objections? Why don't we do the public comment? Oh, yes, please. Public comment. I'm a terribly sorry person for the public. I forgot you were there.

John Pringle, if you are still available or interested in speaking, you've been unmuted.

Yeah, my name's John Pringle. I'm with Acuity. You've met me. I'm a consultant on the Barbano Place site, Hickory Pit. Chevron Service Station. Hey, so I'm extremely excited that Commissioner Bookbinder's subcommittee that you all have worked on is coming forward with something that could meaningfully cause projects to get built. The inclusionary Housing requirement is extreme and onerous. Personally, I don't believe the few sites available in Palo Alto or Cupertino where rents are $300 to $500 higher than Campbell. is uh the uh the only comparison i strongly encourage you to look what san jose did to suddenly stimulate uh 9 000 units getting approved that were shelved for years um number two park fees uh mr chairman you wondered about the effect of park fees on my project at 7.6 million if i don't get an exemption for the small units which we've planned which is already compromising our project but uh cutting the park fees on small units goes towards making the project feasible you'll the city would still get on our 324 units the city would still get three and a half million dollars that's not uh chump change and uh uh thirdly uh I don't want to lose my total thought. On the ministerial approach, I'd like to comment as a developer. I concur with Commissioner Sizer, how you pronounce your name, sir, that projects should come for concurrence in some way to the Planning Commission. Now, concurrence may not be binding, but I think you have the right to have two or three concurrence presentations.

I'm just going to, real quick, my understanding is the sense of the commission is... You would like, so on point one, moving approvals down, you would like information on how many are modified or objected to in some way, and there's some concern about how can we get public feedback, and ideally get public feedback without delaying every project for two months, which is roughly what it takes to do this kind of hearing. Secondly, inclusionary zoning rates. You would, again, like to have some data on how this took effect in San Jose, like survey what other cities are doing, although note that the rents there tend to be higher, which make it easier to pull more out of projects. about the exemptions. We'd like an estimate of how many of this would impact. How would this impact production? What's the actual elasticity involved? I have to know. I think I have to talk to some developers about this. I'll see what I can get quantitatively. and about the SHRA projects. There's a lot of skepticism here and I think unless I can come up with a real good way to sell this, I will likely drop this before it comes back. But I will be bringing this back with a much shorter document which says basically, what's the goal? What are the constraints? What are the changes we're proposing? And what is the data backing up what we expect to happen with these changes? Or why do we think these are good ideas? And that should be about it. So it should be considerably. I will drop the editorializing. Thank you for that. um also i know we are continuing to investigate permitting timelines uh we believe that better coordination with the fire department is key as we heard tonight but i don't have anything that we're confident enough to present this time so what we have here this is this may not be the last trench but this is certainly the first trench of things that we can do that requires minimal staff time and um minimal money from the city and that concludes our presentation

Thank you. Okay. All right. And now 45 minutes on the second subcommittee. Nope. All right. We are moving on to the report of the Community Development Director.

Oh, you would like me to give a little update?

Oh, no. I mean, no.

We're still working on it. We've gathered most of our data. We just got to put it all together. Well, I'm very excited about it.

20 seconds.

I'll keep this generally brief one bit of advice, which the Commission knows state. So any ad hoc committee work and subsequently so process ad hoc subcommittees have to report to the Commission. There's no path where an ad hoc subcommittees can go directly to council. I've been asked that question three times. I want to make that clear that that ad hoc subcommittee work has to go through this commission. if there's an affirmative vote of this commission to forward it to the council, we can talk about it. I've been asked that a couple of times. And two, I would say in your work, make sure you stay within the four corners of your charter, zoning, land use, general plan, to put a pin more discussions of Think about putting different bond measures on the ballot or something that's a broader, I'd caution hard on the commission way in the areas that are in the four corners of what the commission is. So that's my advice back under Ad Hocs of Canoe Work. That being said, I'm always appreciative of if the work tailors with the work plan and more work doing, it's great research and support that moves us forward. That's my impression.

So can I ask a quick question? Sure, go ahead. So in terms of staying within our bounds, The issue about, I mean, you had said when the park fee thing came up at first, it was actually not within our bounds. Now, does that mean we can or can't recommend a change to the park fee?

I think you could. My intent there was to give you education. Yeah. And so you see one side of this. You see developers that obviously have to make a bottom line to produce housing and the city wants housing and a large park fee impacts the bottom line. Obviously, the reaction will be to reduce that park fee. There is no free lunch, as you've heard from our Recreation and Community Services Director, Public Works Director, staff, and you'd hear from council members, if we don't have those fund revenues, we can't provide those park services, so. My intent is to give you education so you understand the totality of what that means. But I think you, as park fees is part of your development review process, that's what they pay, I think it's generally within REL that it's something you can advise. But it affects a lot of the city far beyond zoning in general.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I just want to know whether we should even... No, it's a great question.

Yeah.

Yeah.

can i ask about the uh does the city approve new development um hoa ccnrs is that within our within the city yeah we have where does that bill bill's going to weigh in but we we have the opportunity to i mean to enter police powers to ensure there's something there that affects the city we have ability to review and condition them in certain yes and and things are a little different than when i started here um uh

We used to have standard conditions that were required to be incorporated into CC&Rs. I haven't, well, I have seen a couple of those related to townhome developments. But since we are required to have objective standards and only impose objective standards that are knowable by the developer and the city at the time of submission of the application, I'm not sure that there are current requirements for CC&Rs meet that standard, I'd have to check. Can you speak to where it's approved? Rob is familiar with our requirements for CC&Rs currently.

I think part of it is ensuring that the CC&Rs don't have actions that conflict with any ordinances. There's something we need to ensure.

But who does that? Who actually signs saying, okay?

or not where does that happen it comes yeah once once the project's approved they standardly they're required to send the ccnrs to the city staff to review and approve and so you is that you you would approve it it's yeah the administration the director or the planning staff it's usually referred to my office for review for compliance with the conditions of approval

Because the suggestion about the parking on the tandem thing I thought was fantastic. And I'd like to add no restrictions on work from home in the HOAs, which I have seen myself. You know, no prohibition from that kind of stuff, which would be counter to what I was talking about.

Usually there's a clause you can't have in your CCN or something that's in conflict with the Campbell Municipal Code or something.

Yeah, but the municipal, I would go right to this and say, looks compliant to me.

It's modified all the time. If you listed every single provision, it'd be very long.

But they are. I mean, there are hundreds of pages. What do you mean? I'm not getting a clear answer. Are you saying that you're not willing to make sure that there's not a prohibition on work from home?

I'm saying it's something we could look at, but... Ultimately, there's a multitude of city laws that you have to. So the question is, what would be required for you to pull out the CTTRs that are listed as a matter of compliance?

I mean, it would require an ordinance revision in any start.

Well, just that not have it in the CCNR wouldn't mean you'd have to do anything but not have it in the CCNR. That's all I meant.

Well, then you wouldn't have notice of a provision in the municipal code that imposes those same requirements.

But now... Now, what are you talking about? So if you have in this example, a CCNR that says no working from home, and you have the municipal code that says no working from home in this example, you got to change two things later. If you guys make sure it's not in the CCNRs, when and if the municipal code changes, you're just done, which I think is a wiser way to go about this in this day and age. And I'm asking if you'll do that or not.

I think we may be a little far afield. A little bit, yeah. I can report back. I'm ready to do my report out. Separately, we generally only implement what's in the municipal code today. So if it's in the municipal code, staff would implement it. If it's not, we'd have to change it. okay do the report sure yeah uh at the council meeting last week three uh items of note to the commission uh council did extend the intermortems for uh sp79 so that includes the exclusions of historic properties and the distances from the light rail stations uh that remains in effect uh the city did authorize receipt of a general plan amendment at 480 chapman So this is a property that has been zoned commercial for and general plan commercial for many years as a single family home on the property. I think through multiple owners, it's never manifested as a as a commercial property. They're intending to add, do an addition to the house on the property as its own commercial, they're doing so. So they've applied to change it to residential. City Council authorized that to come in. So at some point in the future, that's just an entry door to apply for a general plan amendment. You'll actually see the process of the application. Last but not least, but not insignificant, council did adopt its fiscal year 27 budget. To educate the commission on when you hear from me on the amount of resources and what we focus on, the stick behind that, I'm more than happy to come back with you on the adopted community development department work plan, just your advice on what we're working on and what you'll see over the next year. I could do that the next meeting or the day after. And last but not least, as mentioned, we are down to two planners at this point. I am happy to report we are in the recruitment process for two additional planners. Interviews are ongoing over the next few weeks. And cross your fingers, we'll have good candidates. Best case scenario, if we find good candidates, likely hired in July, August, I think.

How about the planning commission?

Don't have any new news. Yeah. Because I have to reapply in August. So, I mean, we're coming up on that. Sure. Yep.

Do they still have two candidates that they're considering?

It's the last news I have. Yeah. I was at, the clerk has been out sick. I've been on vacation. I met, you know, until about a few days ago. For the next commission, I can ask again. That's status.

All right.

with that at 9 50 p.m i adjourn this meeting of the planning commission and we'll meet again uh what is the date 14th i think july 14th 14th if if there is a no no no sorry right okay council meeting but that was cancer yes it will be july sorry what's that day 28th Okay, we're not doing one. There was a conflict with the council. Oh, that's right. Next meeting is July 28th. Okay. Alan, you're hearing that, right? July 28th. Okay. Just making sure. All right. Have a good night, everybody.

Inside joke.

I don't want a third email from you.