Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

the West Valley Pet Lodge. And this was a use that was originally established through plan creation approval of a breeding and dog boarding kennel back in 1961. That also included use of a former residence as an office associated with that use. The site was also developed with dog runs, a pool and accessory structures that have been demolished under separate permit following the closure of the West Valley Pet Lodge. So the application before you is to allow establishment of a landscaping contractor's equipment yard at the rear of the property, including an eight-foot-tall slatted screening fence. There are other site parking landscaping improvements that are reflected in the plans, and these constitute a minor change to the property's 1961 site approval. And so that detail is noted because this application does not incorporate a site and architecture review permit, and therefore also did not require review by the site and architecture review committee. So in other words, had this not been a component of a conditional use, the improvements that you see in the site plan would have otherwise been simply ministerially approved by staff. But since the outdoor storage yard, the contractor's equipment yard rather, is subject to conditional use permit, the package includes all the associated improvements. As part of the application, there's also a request for a tree removal permit to remove a 24-inch pine tree that's located at the bottom left corner. That tree basically intrudes into what otherwise would be the contractor's equipment yard. In terms of review considerations, as discussed in the staff report, the application is generally consistent with the city zoning code land use of a contractor's equipment yard, which is permissible within the zoning district with the conditional use permit subject to various special use provisions. In that case, that also includes an eight foot tall wall or screening around the yard. The property is also found consistent with the general plan and that the proposal is an industrial use consistent with that designation and also consistent with various actions and policies that direct the city to try to use appropriate siting locations for industrial activities that otherwise don't degrade the intent and purpose of the light industrial zoning district. In terms of overall compatibility, equipment yards can be somewhat impactful if you have residences or commercial users next to them in terms of noise or truck traffic, visibility, and just kind of general operational impacts. But those are generally limited by the virtue of the property's location deep inside the industrial zoning district and also subject to conditions for approval of a conditional use permit. So therefore, based on affirmative determinations of the required findings for a conditional use permit, a tree removal permit, a fence exception, which is necessary because of the screening fence that exceeds six feet in height, which is the otherwise applicable standard, and the appropriate CEQA exemption determination, staff does recommend that the Planning Commission adopt the resolution approving the conditional use permit and associated tree removal permit to allow the contractor's equipment storage on the property. And with that, I will take any questions the commission may have. Thank you.

Thank you for the clear report. I can't go this way for questions, so I have to go to Commissioner Zisser.

quite catch all the things about why this is CUP, but I think it's about the eight-foot fence and maybe, and then the tree removal required, right?

Well, the conditional use permit is really focused on the equipment yard. So the use of the property to store vehicles associated with the landscaping business or materials that may be stored back there, mulch, pieces of trees, other types of landscaping material.

Is it combined with the zoning?

Well, subject to a conditional use permit.

Okay, all right.

So historically, this type of outdoor activity can get a little unwieldy, so the city requires a conditional use permit to kind of provide some bookends around its use.

And the fence height is the same as kind of residential fence height. It's six foot. So has anybody thought about... I mean, eight feet seemed reasonable to me in a commercial district like this, and it would seem like maybe our fence requirements in the future could be adjusted to accept something higher in these kinds of light industrial areas?

I mean, that could be a consideration. I mean, here that's basically what's being asked as part of the conditional use permit permission for going up to eight feet.

We're trying to. put less on on them in the future and this seems like you know it would make sense in in light industrial areas where you know whatever's reasonably adjacent that at seven or eight foot would would be more standard but i get it that's the standard right now yeah the fencing standards are basically city-wide across all zoning districts okay that's all you got commissioner comcar

The civil public works to engineering and previous and previous. analysis that's been done. If you could. send it if you can please talk a little bit about you know what what is there now what is going to be but oh yeah learning this stormwater treatment and.

Yes, so good evening. Commissioners Roger stores senior civil engineer with Public Works Department. So in this instance, as many of you may be aware, the stormwater threshold is 5000 square feet of new or reconstructed impervious area. Trigger stormwater treatment triggers a bunch of requirements. That frankly, we'd like to avoid on projects if we can, and this in this particular project, there's an opportunity to do that by. We encourage the. the contractor or the applicant to use pervious concrete for the parking lot work. So between the primarily with the use of the pervious concrete, they're able to keep the total reconstructed impervious area under 5000 square feet. And it's actually not, you know, it's not like they're necessarily using, you know, nasty chemicals or anything that we need to be concerned about. And the soil out here is actually very good for infiltration. And the groundwater is pretty deep. So generally, if you have your groundwater more than 10 feet deep, the soil strata is assumed to clean out any impurities. So it's kind of a win-win-win for us on this project. We have so many projects now that are trading stormwater treatment, which require annual inspections and just the list of projects that we have to follow up on year after year after year is getting longer and longer and longer. So any opportunity like this where we can keep a project off that list, we We try to do that.

Especially when off-site also gets counted in.

Exactly. We have a discussion with the Water Board coming up in September as part of MRP 4.0 to see what we can do to address that. Thank you very much. All right.

Thank you. That was my one. Commissioner Hawley.

I got three. First one. No barbed wire on the top of the fence, I assume?

No, no borrowing, all right.

Second one, shipping trees on site?

No, no, no. Perhaps if there are questions for the applicant, that can be addressed during public comment.

Sure. Idling vehicles. Might be. I can wait. Okay. Whatever.

Can you ask a question? Just can't vote, or? Okay.

like observe, I realize I haven't been here for it. I apologize for my lateness.

No problem. Commissioner Zisser asked my question. So I think that is all of our questions for staff. With that, I'm gonna open the item for public comment. We follow the City Council's guidance on time. Everyone can speak. The applicant can speak for up to five minutes. Everybody else can speak for up to two. The applicant's not required to speak, but he's already gotten up there, so it looks like he wants to. If you could please identify yourself by name, and thank you for joining us here tonight.

Okay, my name is Jim Moreland. I'm an architect for the project. My client had a conflict for tonight. He's available by phone. If there's any questions, he's not available by Zoom because, like me, he's kind of untechnical. But it's a pretty simple project. It meets all the requirements of the zoning and public works requirements as far as drainage. I HAVE REVIEWED THE PROPOSED CONDITIONS OF APPROVAL WITH THE OWNER APPLICANT. HE'S NOT OWNER YET BECAUSE HE'S BUYER CONTENTION ON APPROVAL OF THE CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT. SO HE'S APPLICANT PROPOSED BUYER. GENE HE OWNS A BUSINESS CALLED FLORAL TIERRA LANDSCAPING. HE'S BEEN IN BUSINESS FOR PROBABLY 15 YEARS. VERY REPUTABLE. This is ideal site for him because very central to the West Valley, which he serves to do a lot of landscaping maintenance and new new landscaping construction. And. So we just have reviewed the application and he accepts the conditions of approval and I'm here to speak for him. I'm authorized agent. And if you have any questions, I know you had a question about the pine tree. If you have any other questions, I can go ahead.

The pine tree question that's getting cut down that it's not that it's that, you know, the chipping of cut trees you know with the wood chipper is that going to be done on site no it's all off-site all right answer all of their debris is off-site moved off-site so they don't keep any debris on site all right great that's what i was hoping you'd say and they keep their equipment there to go off-site and do their maintenance just just doing my job thank you um and i think the answer is no barbed wire on the top of the fence no barbed wires not actually permitted by the zoning ordinance just doing my job and third one is uh idling any is there gonna is there a limit to the amount of minutes that a vehicle can idle on the property i don't think there's any regulations about that no because you know that's an environment there's regulations about sound but i don't think there's any regulations okay because i would i would offer a suggestion if anything more than five minutes becomes for time has more to do with the sound yeah yeah okay those are my three comments slash whatever and could you let them know thanks for choosing campbell pardon me let the applicant know that we appreciate them choosing camp sure okay definitely let's move from sounds hey we're happy to have them here nice uh commissioner comcar any questions no no questions thank you commissioners this or nothing i don't either hey thank you so much for coming tonight

We'll open it up. Any other members of the public would like to speak on this item? Anyone online? All right. Closing public comment. Now we're going to discuss as a commission, starting with Commissioner Zisser.

Yeah.

The exception for the higher fence and the removal of the tree to me doesn't seem to be a problem. It's in a light industrial area that is consistent with something like this. So I have no problem.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't have any issues with it either. I'm supportive of the project.

Mr. Allen? I have nothing to add. also supportive straightforward uh would someone like to make a motion to approve this item move dude do we have a second can i read it you can yes i'm sorry move to approve this got excited contractors swimming yard for landscape contracting business including

shouldn't be nine foot, eight foot, no, eight foot high screening fence and gates, continued administrative office use of an existing building, and removal of one pine tree on property located at 1063 Dell Avenue, PLN 2026-58. I'll second.

Great, Ken, can we have a roll call vote?

Yes, Chair. Commissioner Scissor?

Aye.

Commissioner Kamkar?

Aye.

Commissioner Haldane?

Aye.

Chair Fields?

Aye. The item passes with a vote of 4-0. Planning Commission item is final unless appealed in writing to the City Clerk within 10 calendar days. Congratulations. Have a good night. Thank you. All right. Moving us to item three, new business housing permits streamlining ad hoc subcommittee to consider the recommendation of Commissioner Bookbinder and Comcar regarding measures to support housing production in Campbell. Sounds like we should do the report. Director Eastwood, I don't know if you want to comment anything on the email you sent out earlier today on this or do that in line with the discussion or?

have that email after uh the subcommittee's report i can comment on staff perspective uh per the commission's wish maybe start with the report and go sure i can give a um uh an overview um given that my laptop is somewhat flaky about doing this uh matt if you could present uh you're talking about um It doesn't have to be right now. I can give the overview. We've been working on this since the beginning of the year, since January. It's gone through a couple of iterations, a couple of constraints, a couple of things that are important as inputs for context. The city is very heavily fiscally constrained right now, mainly because the Measure K funds are escrowed. So none of these proposals will cost the city anything appreciable. And we are also heavily understaffed. So none of these proposals will cost significant staff time. Also, we have received very vigorous feedback from the public that they would not like the city to add housing via distributing townhomes throughout the single family neighborhoods. So the city's original housing plan relied heavily on a small number of relatively high high density sites which would be developed with apartment style or stacked flat housing this has not happened because of a variety of external factors and our goal at this point is seeing what we can do to help mitigate those we are not responsible for macroeconomic trends which make it harder to do these things we're not responsible for high interest rates or tariffs or any of that stuff but the city does have levers to pull and So this is our attempt to find levers for the city to pull and find trade offs that we consider to be acceptable and make a case for doing so. There are a number we've received some feedback, some of that feedback we've incorporated into our recommendations. And some of that feedback we responded to in a little FAQ section at the bottom of the presentation. So I can go over briefly what the three sort of pillars are.

And I know if it helps the commission, sorry to interrupt. Stephen Rose is online. He has access to your memo. If it helps the commission, he can present remotely.

Sure. It's just a lot of text, so it may not be terribly engaging, but yes. So the bottom line, by the way, so chair, you had asked, can you make the impact of this quantitative? And I did my best, but rob did a much better job and found someone who's willing to use their pro forma to estimate the impact of these things and my understanding is that currently this type of project is about 300 basis points away from being feasible and if we do all of these things there are somewhat optimistic set of um Assumptions. This will make it so that they're 100 basis points away from being feasible, so this would be solving two thirds of the problem and again not costing the city anything in terms of money or staff time, which is what we're trying to go for. So the three pillars are first. changing the timeline. I believe staff says that at no point have any minor housing development project proposals been appealed. These can still be appealed, they would just be approved by the Community Development Director and not go to Planning Commission. Again, they could still be appealed, this would just, in the average case save about two months of time. Again, we will not be giving up any discretion. These projects are all values density bonus, which means they are all protected under the Housing Accountability Act, which means that we cannot reduce condition or deny them. So we're not giving up any discretion. Second one, redoing our inclusionary zoning policies to be in line with what the city of San Jose has done. They were in pretty much the same position where they had a bunch of apartment projects that were not going forward. They changed their inclusionary zoning rules and the projects went forward. And third, change our park fees. Rather than exempting only small ADUs, we would exempt small ADUs and our small density bonus apartments, local density bonus apartments. Those are the three portions they each target a different aspect of what makes it harder or more expensive to build housing here. And I think, strictly speaking, so I want to address this straight ahead with the feedback we got from staff is that. If we reduce our inclusionary zoning percentages, we will get fewer affordable homes, the thing is, as far as I can tell this type of project has produced zero homes in the last eight years. some is larger than if any of these go forward any proportion of that will be larger than what we've been getting same with the parks fees we have gotten none of these projects so the amount of parks fees we we've collected from this is zero this would allow us to collect some parks fees and it would be a strict improvement over what we have now um matt would you like to add saying that's that's the quick overview i can go into some detail if there are questions thank you so um

Thank you for that. So the bottom line is we have tried the way that we've been doing it for so many years. And as Einstein says, if we want to achieve something, we try the same method and it doesn't produce, keep doing it, doesn't make sense to try something different. So that's what we're saying. Let's try something different, see if it yields results. If it does, then we're in the right track. If it doesn't, we can always go back. But the analysis that Adam is doing is showing from a developer's point of view, if you don't get enough return on your investment, you won't go through with the project. And the tweaks that he's recommending can put us over that threshold. This is what he's going to be showing. It's going to put us over the threshold where developers say, I can take a chance with this project. There's enough return for me to go to my own investors, get their money and be able to make this happen. And then looking at it from, I mean, I'm an engineer, but looking at it from a non-engineering point of view, If we cannot force developers to build affordable homes and sell it at half cost, we cannot force them. It has to be incentive for them to choose to do that, you know, and so You know, let's try something different. Let's see what happens. We're not going to be stuck by it and always go back if what we're proposing doesn't work. So that's that's and then there was also an article that in San Jose inside, you know, digital news today regarding this very same topic of building What California is doing with its housing mandate? How many homes have California, not just Campbell or Santa Clara County or Northern California? And Campbell is not the only one. They're saying like 6% of the counties and cities that are mandated by the state to reach their goals only 6% have been able to keep up with their goals. We're almost at a halfway mark in an eight-year cycle. Only 6% have been able to, I guess, approve enough projects where you could say, oh, these guys are in line to meet their goal. That tells you something. That tells you what we're trying to achieve and the methods we're using to achieve it is not realistic. That's the bottom.

Thank you. So I haven't prepared exactly how I want to go over this. Do we want to do questions from the commission and public hearing?

Fields, what would you like to do? Rob, why don't you just, I don't know that the public saw your email, right? So why don't you share what you said in the email, then we'll do... Commissioner questions that will do public comment, then we'll do deliberation.

Sure. And we'll make sure that email gets put in the administrative records of the public transactions. So this morning, I had a chance to look through in more detail the recommendations from the Ad Hoc Subcommittee. I do want to make very clear a few clarifications from staff's perspective on this. One is, and we've had several meetings with Matt and Adam on this. So staff is not supportive of all three proposals. I would say staff is supportive of the permit streamlining. And to speak to that, If the commission is supportive of that, I think I'd like to work with our staff on the dividing lines of where council planning commission are at. There's some technical details, but the overall objective, given there is limited discretion of housing projects going to public hearings of streamlining, staff has observed that too and would ask the commission if they're recommending that as a policy to go forward. Some of the fine details to leave the staff to recommend to the council on where those fine lines are. On the park fees, I would say community development staff is supportive of this. As mentioned, we do have a program that provides a density bonus for small units, number one, so it aligns well with that program. Number two, the state currently does not allow any jurisdiction to charge park fees for an equivalent ADU of the same size. So I think there's an equity provision there that makes sense. And specifically in the stacked flat projects, this is a project and a measure that I think would help. Now, holistically, that is community development department staff. I think I've gotten preliminary feedback from our park staff and our public work staff. There's quite a bit of hesitation on a measure that potentially could reduce park impact fees and revenue that are desperately needed, as you've heard from from our public works and parks folks. So that's not a unanimous staff position. And that would have to get sorted out if this goes forward between now and the council. On the third, staff does not support a reduction or inclusion rate housing requirements. And I've stayed as such to commissioners Kamkar and Buckbinder. um couple reasons uh number one um to hit our arena numbers uh we do have to produce below market rate units uh it's not only market rate units it's interesting i looked back at the previous housing cycle In the previous housing cycle, CAM only had one tool, was the inclusionary housing ordinance. We didn't have commercial Lincoln fees. We didn't have a housing program. We didn't try and support affordable housing projects. And if you look at the housing that was actually produced then, when it was much easier to pencil, I'd say 80 to 90% of it was above market rate. So they were produced... You could produce a lot of market rate housing, but there was not a lot of below market rate housing. And what I mean by saying that is we need the tools to meet our arena to produce below market rate housing, and that is the tool of the inclusionary housing ordinance. What staff would offer as an alternative, if we've heard this feedback from some developers, is instead the ability to pay a fee for the difference between the state density bonus, which is traditionally 10%, and the city's 15 and what that does is two things one is i think providing a deed restricted affordable unit is a much bigger i'd say hit to the bottom line of a developer who's building a project over many years versus paying a fee up front and i think you'd hear that from most developers Two, our inclusionary housing program needs all the money it can to support our affordable housing projects. I'll say at this point, we have potentially four projects in the pipeline to develop 100% affordable projects. None of those projects will pencil, likely, without any, well, they cannot pencil without any amount of public funding. So that money does not get washed away by feeing out and providing that to Campbell. We can support deeply affordable housing in Campbell to actually meet our renown. For that reason and a couple more happy happy to provide more details I do have our housing manager Eloise online and senior planner Stephen Rose as technical experts, but for those reasons, staff does not support the third proposal. Happy to. There are some clarifications. We've put in the record on the current policy that I hope you can reference on the inclusionary housing ordinance, and with that I'll stop and if you have questions.

Thank you. Just to be clear, how many inclusionary units have we produced since 2018 in projects of this type? I want to clear projects of this type was the type that we're looking at streamlining over 45 dwelling use an acre non townhome like larger apartment projects.

Since 2018. Since 20 Yeah, I don't I started here in 2021. I'll say we have since we have one entitled project. And we have several in process. I know applicants here tonight for one of those. But prior prior to my being here, perhaps senior planner Steven Rose can weigh in. I'm not aware of others.

Without getting into specifics, very few. I mean, projects of that density included the St. Anton's Railway Avenue project and the Bay West project at 1677 South Bascom Avenue in the 45th.

Are those projects that have actually been built or just entitled?

Both of those were built. So yeah, the mixed use building I'm speaking to on Bascom Avenue, I think it's new address is 1725. That's about a 45 unit per acre project. And then the St. Anton's project is the townhome was a combination of lion homes and St. Anton communities that built the St. Anton apartment building off of Railway Avenue to south of the light rail station.

When were those built? How long has it been since we've had one of those projects?

Those are the prior arena cycles. That would have been Arena 5. So the projects which we have on the books today, we aren't seeing projects of the density of 45 units per acre or greater, with the sole exception possibly of the 700 West Hamilton project, which was recently approved. And it's moving forward, but it's not yet built.

Okay. And... So 7025 South Bascom was built in, I think, 2015? Correct. OK. So anything since you've gotten here has been built of that type?

No, I mean the the lay the land as of late has been lower density projects. It's not just unique to Campbell, but in general we've been seeing a lot more townhome development and the like. There's been interest, but as as we've observed that for a lot of macro marker market economic reasons, those products haven't been penciling.

Understood, thank you.

Let's do questions for the subcommittee. Commissioners this or do you want to start or staff?

to do your mic yeah sorry i'd rather ask us not to just like an approval where we just ask certain questions and then we have to come back for comments i i don't know if anybody's else agreeable to it but i have both questions and comments that are combined and since this is talking about a a you know a proposal that's not like a regular item it would seem to me that we we should be able to ask questions and make commentary at the same time but that's my personal Take out.

Okay. When do you think we should do public comment if we were to do?

Well, after we kind of get all our questions and comments out and then we can take public comments and then come back. And if we have some more things to say, then yeah. But I think I'd like to go last because I have really a lot of things to say about this proposal. And if some others are going to cover them, I can strike some of that off my list.

Okay. All right. would well there's only five of us and two of us are on the subcommittee so why don't you go first charlie nothing to say at this point really no questions no uh okay a couple uh i guess what is the subcommittee's reaction to staff's recommendation Because it sounds like if I'm hearing what Director Eastwood is saying, he's comfortable with one and three, however, would like to have staff actually sort of flesh these out as recommendations, pull more data, and then is not comfortable with two. Is that a fair summary? Correct. Okay. So subcommittee, what is your reaction to that? Because I eventually want to steer us towards...

some final conclusion here so why don't we why don't we start with that where are you guys at at that sure um as pointed out um staff's concern is that we will get fewer affordable units our current program has produced no affordable units it could literally not be worse the results could literally not be worse The staff is worried that we will get less money for affordable housing program from these programs, we are currently getting no money, it could not be worse, I am. I think staff is talking about a hypothetical situation in which some of these these projects pencil and we can skim as much off the top, as we have been, but even with these changes it's going to be a near thing. And on a broader level. Producing market rate housing is not a bad thing. Producing market rate housing is how we don't wind up in a situation like we are now where the market rate of housing is unaffordable to nearly everyone. There's some sections in there about does producing market rate housing actually lower the price of housing? There are six separate studies in a review article saying that it does. It is one of the most well-supported results in, I guess I would say, urban economics. So I understand that staff is absolutely right. We need subsidized housing, and there's no money for it. We need subsidized projects, and there's no money for them. But you can't get money out of this. The amount of money we're trying to get out of this is making it so we get no money out of this, so we get no units out of this. Just a quick follow-up.

But the question was, staff is recommending taking one and three to staff and not like what it sounds like you would like to still recommend to?

Yes, we're still recommending to. Feeing out, we can listen to developers about this, but feeing out still costs the project. It is still expensive at the project. You'll still wind up with a situation where projects are much less likely to pencil. And again, we get no units. We get no money from that.

When you say no money,

Feeing out as in, not just park fees, but the idea of feeing out is that they set aside 10% of the units for below market rate and they pay an equivalent for the last 5% into our affordable housing fund. But if that doesn't pencil, then we get neither the below market rate units nor the fees into our affordable housing fund.

Did you also want to comment on that one? Yeah, please.

get that, but if I can, you know, and I don't mean to simplify it, but if there were five birds on a tree branch and I shoot one of them, how many remain? The mat says four. But reality is the other guys hear the sound of the gun and they all fly away. So what's the right answer? And here we're saying reality is If the fee structure we're putting in does not get much bite from developers, we're not bringing in any money. If you're not bringing any money, then the program is not functioning as it was intended. So let's lower the fee. Let's see if that will get developers to, I mean, and that's the thing. So, you know, I understand city doesn't want to lose funds for, especially for parks, you know, which is a huge amenity for, you know, smaller units that just don't have the space that we would like to have. But reality says we've got to try something different. And so that's why we want to continue with that.

It's just a little problem I have with the logic. I understand you're getting nothing now, so what are you really giving up? But there's another side of that coin, and that is the costs to the city can increase because more people are here. And those costs can include the impact to a parks for a park fee that you are never going to get. So, and it could be garbage collection. It could be all kinds of, you know, I don't know what the cost per citizen is living here, but whatever that number is, that's getting added every time more people show up here. So we are increasing costs, even if we're not getting any more money by the presence of more people. To what extent? I'm not saying that's a deal breaker. I'm just saying it's not zero. And that's the comment about what we're giving out.

I can respond to that. So you're absolutely right. As more people come, there's more traffic, more cost, more water usage, more energy usage, all those. But they also pay property taxes. They also pay sales taxes. They also bring in business. They also, if they're a business owner, they hire people, just like our last item that we heard. So there's a balance. to the other side. So it's not just cost, cost, cost. At some density, revenue to the city offsets the library and the police department and the fire department costs. At some density, it does. In San Jose, it used to be 55 units per acre. Back then, they said if you make 25 units per acre, it balances out. But San Jose, but Campbell and San Jose are too different anymore.

But they make it up with sales. Absolutely. So, you know, if I had the math, I could get behind you if that's going to pencil.

So I'm still stuck on this in loofy thing.

Can I answer Commissioner Olney's question first? As I understand it, mainly due to Prop 13, a person moving into a new building will pay significantly more in property tax than the median resident of Campbell. So if anything, it will make our per capita revenue higher and it will make the city work out a little better.

We get such a small piece of that property tax. I mean, I get the state's loving it, but I'm not convinced the city is, because every, the last time I checked, I think it was granted, it was like 20 years ago, it was a net negative per person in Campbell, and it was made up for by sales tax. So I can't believe that the Prop 13 change from 20 years ago is any different than it is now.

It represents a significant part of our budget to property taxes, and so it'll only go up when we develop it maybe it doesn't go up a lot i think it's a tenth of a percent of the property taxes it comes to camp yeah so it seems small but but the budget i think is uh the property tax represent 40 or something it's it's a significant property tax and sales taxes are about this I'm not sure which one's more, but they're both the two major significant suppliers of revenue to the city. And if we build more new units, then the property taxes will go up, especially since a lot of this stuff is pre-'79 or whatever it was for Prop 13. So there is going to be a net amount. I don't know how much more that's going to be, but I would believe it's some substantial amount over time.

you're right and that's your selling point i would also mention that we are our general plan like this has been brought up as do we have enough water capacity do we have enough sewer capacity maybe we don't have enough room for people and we really did go over that the city council as of 2023 got that in the general plan which really did look at this like can we afford to have more people can we provide services can we provide infrastructure and the answer to that was yes

But that was without reducing the revenue from these construction costs.

None of this. So the parks fees do not go to maintenance. They go to capital projects.

Well, I'm just saying that the analysis you just cited was before you reduce the revenue coming.

None of that goes to services. That goes to capital projects.

Well, I didn't say it did. I just said that that was before you took a reduction.

That's not like general fund money. That is not coming out of anything that goes to pay for regular services.

and so this chain reaction is like getting revenue several times over with one sale you know and so so you need well it's staff that's saying they don't want to see the money go away and i'm just trying to figure out the logic behind it if if you guys are saying money's not going away it's not a problem

We're talking about two different things. Staff is talking about funds for the affordable housing program that is specifically money for the city to use to produce permanently affordable below market rate housing. That's completely separate from providing services like police and water and all that to everybody. It's a program that staff would really like to fund. I would like to have it funded, but attempting to fund it through this means it doesn't get funded.

the city raised the in lieu fees because the in lieu fees were too small and that the developers were taking that because it was much more beneficial for them to pay low in lieu fees rather than have a below market rate unit. And somebody can correct me if I'm wrong. So they raised the in lieu fee rate to find a balance where a developer has to decide one way or another on Jim shaking his head. In lieu fee, hopefully he's shaking his head because I'm saying the right thing. That it makes a tougher decision to either build the unit or pay the in lieu fee. Now we're saying we want more in lieu fees. I don't know if we want more in lieu fees. The amount of in lieu fees that Campbell can get to support 100% affordable housing, I don't know if that's meaningful. I mean, I don't know much about that. Because I know that 100% affordable housing is usually nonprofit development, and they have much more trouble with their financing. And they often need help from the cities with land or money, none of which we have. Now, I don't know if we can get enough in lieu fees. And Rob could tell me I'm wrong. to actually help these four, I only know two of the projects, the VTA project and the Methodist project. I didn't know there were two others. So I've always been a big proponent of 100% affordable housing, because that's the only way that we'll even get close to meeting the requirements, because we're not going to meet it by just building below market rate, 15% or 10% or whatever it is in the, in the market rate stuff. It just says the math just doesn't work. So you have to have two or three or four or five big 100% affordable housing projects to make a dent in our numbers. I don't think anybody can argue that point. The problem is that they've been held up for whatever reason. The financing, they can't figure out where to get all the money. VTA stopped the thing on the Winchester thing. I guess Methodist is on hold. I don't know what the other two are. And so to me, I'm confused about what we or the city wants to, I thought the city had decided that the best thing to do was to raise the in lieu fees to make it more balanced so that developers couldn't just buy themselves out of building a below market rating. Okay. Why don't we have.

So if it helps. Yeah, thank you. I'll just add a few clarifications. So the term you were looking for commissioners this year is called the point of indifference. And if you remember when you reviewed the inclusionary housing setting a price of a generally it would be a toss-up for a developer to provide a unit versus paying the fee i think and of course you have stakeholders here tonight we've heard from many developers generally they'll pay the fee because it's a one-time fee versus something that's on the books if it's a rental project for the next 50 years but that that was the point of the fee stephen rose can speak to the historical fee i believe it was much lower it wasn't used often The difference between inclusionary housing on-site and a fee, inclusionary housing, again, it does make projects harder to pencil. If you're a market rate developer and you have to provide 15% on-site, it's harder to your bottom line. The advantage to the city, those units are immediate. They're built with the project and they come out right away. And in lieu of fee, typically developers, and you can hear from developers tonight, will pay that fee instead of providing the unit. It provides money into the housing fund we have. We use those monies to support 100% affordable projects. And as I mentioned, we have a few that we're trying to support. The issue is there is a delay, though. I mean, obviously, you have to wait until... you have enough money to support a project or a variety of projects. So the money comes into the city, it uses that money to support projects, but versus a unit being produced right away, there's a delay until the affordable housing project is built.

If I can also chime in, my understanding is the 15% number wasn't changed. It used to be 15%. And what they did is instead of applying to 10 or more units, it started applying to five. Yeah, we changed it back. Well, no, still you pay affordable percentage on five or more units. It's just that you can fee out, you can pay in lieu fee rather than build it.

I think you can fee out the fractional unit. It's stuff like that. The thing that I wanted to... It's a small part of the things that we're doing here.

You're talking about where they build seven units or eight units, and they're going to pay the fee on the one unit because they don't want to build one unit out of eight, okay? But everything over 10, you know, I've been here six years, and we've seen 20 unit, 40 unit, 120 unit, 80 unit, 72 unit, we've seen all these projects. And I can't remember one large project that didn't do the 15%. Maybe somebody could remind me of a large project that hasn't put in 15%. I mean, Jim's done two or three, four projects. All these projects that we've seen from Llewellyn to Gilman to the computer technology to six or seven or eight other ones that are of some consequence, they're usually anywhere from 25 to 40 to 100 to 300, are all 15%. So we're getting the 15%. Now, the question I have is, if we didn't have the 15%, to me, the bigger question is, if you reduce it, do more people come, okay? Whether you get more development.

To be clear, we're not reducing the percentages for lower density projects like those townhomes. Exactly. And so, like, I would not be...

And so the idea is, are we going to see 45-acre ones in the future? And I don't know the answer to that.

We have applications for ones. They're just not getting built. And we have approved those projects. They're just not getting built. I would also, like, I think I realize we're, you know, calling an audible here, but I believe staffing. I believe staff can answer that. But just real quick, I would not be opposed to allowing feeding out the last 5% in lower density projects, if staff thinks that would produce like more funding for the affordable housing, like lower density projects currently pencil. I don't see why we wouldn't do that as well. But the point of the fees being, is it the point of indifference? It's that they cost the project the same as providing the units on site would. And there may be, you know, you have to pay the money upfront versus you have to pay the money later, but for a longer time. We try and calibrate them so it is the same hit to the developer. So allowing that switch doesn't really improve matters.

Okay, so time check, we're 40 minutes in, and I feel like we could go around in circles on this, so I wanna make sure that we cover each of the three items and get to public comment. I've been spending the better part of the year on this, I could go on. So, well, I'm not trying to move us immediately, I'm just saying, I'm just being sensitive here.

Can I comment on the first item?

Go ahead, yeah, let's go through the first item, yes.

That doesn't seem true to me anymore. Okay. And most policies, most multifamily proposals go to the community development director as a ministerial.

Not ministerial. That has a specific legal meaning. Staff can explain the difference, but ministerial means that it cannot be appealed up to us. That's not what we're doing.

Okay, well, maybe you can explain specifically, but it seems to me what you're saying is already essentially what we're doing now.

Projects do have to go to planning commission. That involves a two-month delay.

No, but that's for major projects.

So when something is called a minor housing development project, it goes to planning commission. A major housing development project goes to city council. A minor housing development project is pretty much anything over five units. That's not a major housing development project. A major housing development project is over... or a certain amount of frontage. So few projects are considered major. Most multifamily projects still go to planning commission. That adds roughly, according to staff, about a two-month delay. If it could be approved directly by staff, it wouldn't have to schedule a planning commission meeting, and it would save about two months for the developers.

Okay, but let me ask staff. Okay, yeah, we have seen minor projects Okay? It's my understanding that in the future, And the only reason we see them is because the developer has voluntarily offered to put it in front of the planning commission, but we have no right to see it. Now, am I wrong about that? When it comes to my, it's my impression that we, in the future, we're not gonna see these kinds of projects and it's just gonna be a ministerial approval. Am I wrong about that?

No, I mean, based on the size of the project, it would today go to council, plan commission, or be administratively approved. I can ask Stephen Rose to walk the commission through what those levels are, but under today's ordinance, you review a certain size of projects.

Stephen, can you clarify this for us?

Yeah, as it stands today, projects less than five are administratively approved by the Community Development Director. Projects five or greater to technically an unlimited size based on purely unit count is reviewed by the Planning Commission, appealable to the City Council. And then projects on large sites, which are generally described as lots that are over five acres, but also there's some other technical issues. Types of scenarios that can come up like when there's 700 feet of linear frontage or one of the lots over three acres in a through lot or when it's a lot that doesn't have direct frontage under the public street. Those scenarios, those would go straight to city council or they would have a council decision. They'd be planning commission recommendation, city council decision. Now, what was also mentioned is there are a number of state laws, including the ones which we're now more familiar with, like SB 9, SB 450, the urban lots provisions, as well as SB 1123 projects. Those are ministerially approved, and those are not subject to appeal. Those are just pretty much you review them. if the staff reviews them like any other permit, and if we determine it to be meeting all of the requirements, a decision is just made as part of the regular processing of the permit, not subject to an appeal.

Okay, so just to make it clear, anything over five still, it's going to come to the Planning Commission at some point?

As a present, yes.

And that's not going to change unless we ask to change it?

that's correct i mean right now i would clarify however projects up to 10 when they're pursuing a sb 1123 compliance pathway those are still a ministerial decision and do not go to the planning commission so we'd have a little bit of a disconnect because state law can allow for some projects to be ministerially approved up to 10 when pursuing a particular compliance pathway meaning they're meeting the average unit sizes and other requirements of the law And the Planning Commission would not see those projects, even though they're 10-unit projects. Now, if they're not pursuing SB 1123 and there are five units or more, those would be at a minimum at the Planning Commission level.

You're talking about under current policy, not under the proposal? Correct, under current policy.

And current policy, which is something I have a problem with, is that when we see Well, let's take the one that we just saw from Jim Garrison on Hamilton and Lee, 72 unit townhouse that came to us uh that was not a preliminary review was it no so the the developer does is not required to have us take a look at it early it comes to us when we have to vote on it and and and we don't get to say i know we only can do objective and and that's limited we don't get a chance to give input in advance it's already been designed and all the drawings are done and everything. And we're at the end of the process. And that's when we get to see whether it's 20 units or 50 units or 100 units, as long as it's not a major. We're at the end of the process normally, unless the developer voluntarily offers to show us early. Is that correct?

I apologize. The audio is a little bit less optimal on that side of the table. If you could repeat. Did you get that? Sounds like I did not catch all of it now. And if you could repeat the question again.

OK, so when we see the over five units, that's not a starter home. OK, and ministerial when we see 20 unit the development of Virginia Avenue, the 40 unit development, a Latimer development, a Hamilton Avenue development, or a Llewellyn development. These now come to us, but they come to us at the very end when we have to say, yeah, we recommend approval. And it's only when the developer offers on their own to show it to us early so that we can have some input. Otherwise, we get it at the end of the process. Is that correct?

I would generally characterize when permits come in, the city does send a courtesy notice to neighbors. We do have various means and methods of distributing information that a project. Stephen, I'm asking about it coming to the planning commission. To a formal meeting, the planning commission, you are correct. Commissioner Zisser, that happens at the end, the tail end of the process when it's already been reviewed by all the departments and divisions. And we've come to the conclusion that the project is ready for public review. How about SORC?

Doesn't SORC, you know, play into this?

So just a reminder for the I'm hearing it's very hard to hear you online. Any commissioners that speak, I would advise you get up close to the mic and speak directly into the mic.

Steven, how about Sark? Doesn't Sark play into this? You know, that's where a portion of the planning commission gets a chance to give input on.

So the city site and architecture review process still applies, but only to commercial projects. So for residential projects, as part of their streamlining efforts, we've largely made it go just straight to commission or to council, respectively.

Thank you. Other questions on the first item? Commissioner Almey? No questions. No questions. Thank you. So my only question is to staff. It sounds like staff's recommendation and maybe just to mix in my perspective on this one, there is some threshold at which uh an item like commissioners this or having gone to a lot of these there are some buildings where they're quite large we have lots of public comment there's some debate there's smaller complexes they get very few people coming commenting sometimes zero right now we are requiring anything above five maybe ten to come to planning so the proposal would be to potentially change what the threshold is staff's recommendation would be that staff would go do some research to define these thresholds because there's some process that you would take to figure out what they would be to then determine okay great here's what goes to community development here's what goes to planning here's what goes to city council is that

Yeah, that'd be our recommendation. I know that's a bit of an act of faith of the Commission. I mean, I think the general intent is to A, acknowledge that many of these projects, there's little discretion if it's a housing project, and B, to streamline. I think I wanted to work with staff more on finding the fine line between those that go to council, planning commission, administrative, To Steven's point, I mean, there's already an inequity that certain townhome projects, up to 10 units, are ministerial approved. Yet if it's not a townhome in a certain district, it comes to you. An easy fix would be to say that any project under 10 units across the board would be an administrative project. But I just think we want to find that right line. There's another argument. If it's a density bonus project, because that even limits more discretion, it should be administratively approved. The only two caveats I'd add, just being a professional in this profession for many years and seeing members of the public who have questions and want to be involved would be one that we maintain our noticing of neighbors so they're involved and they know what's happening. To Commissioner Buckbender's point, I think we would always encourage our applicants to reach out to the neighborhood and talk to them. And three, that we maintain our appeal provisions. If for some reason someone is notified or grieved of an administrative decision, they do have the right to appeal it up to the Planning Commission and Council.

And could you remind us what the fee is for appeal?

I'm going to leave it on Senior Planner Steven Rose. I believe we have the lowest fees out of the 15 cities at $300, but he can affirm that.

$300. Okay. So I feel like that's number one. Does anyone else have questions on the first one?

Well, I just have one more comment. You know, I mean, there's always talk about this delay of two months to get to the Planning Commission. And, you know, I think that has more validity with regards to a business setting up, you know, trying to get in a small storefront or whatever. But when it comes to these developments, which usually are in terms of the architect and construction people designing it and the whole process that goes on before it ever gets to the planning commission can be a year, two years, two and a half, whatever it is. Two months, to me, is not the issue. Saving two months in streamlining is not something of substantial importance when it comes to these projects that ultimately end up taking sometimes five or six years. And so delaying it two months to get to the planning commission, to me, is I don't know what I want to call it.

But that sounds deliberative. So I would love to get I think we can do public comment. OK, so that's the first one. I think we've covered the second one. Third one, briefly, does anyone else have any questions on this before we open public comment? The ad use? Well, yeah, I have questions about the way this is presented in terms of inclusion, because inclusionary zoning rates, not that one, the ad use, this is the one about park fees are small scale housing, it's the bottom one on the table, the third one. Does anyone have questions on that one?

I have a question about the SRO thing, okay? Sure. First of all, do we have a, I don't even know if we do SROs in this city. We certainly don't have any. We don't have any? No. Okay. And I'm not clear as to whether or not When these would happen, they're not certainly in major developments. Major developments aren't going to put an SRO. They're going to put a studio in. You know, an SRO doesn't have a kitchen or a bathroom. They share it with somebody down the hall, okay? So it's going to be, you know, it's like the SRO hotels in San Francisco. And so I'm not...

not sure how we cover sros in campbell so whether there's a restriction or a what the reason that's there is that that is the definition of our local density bonus um units that they have to be 625 square feet or smaller as a studio or one bedroom or 400 feet or smaller if they're We don't have any SROs, but that's just the definition elsewhere in the code. That's what we have for our local density. Basically, it's saying for local density bonus units.

Yeah. And my take on the exempting, Rob, do we, on 100% affordable, I know this has been answered before, I probably asked it before, but I forget. On the 100% affordable projects, are we exempting them on park fees? Yes.

A projects that qualify and I'll say generally 100% affordable projects we exempt half of their parties.

seems reasonable. So. All you're asking to do on this. Is. Is on. A. And it was under 750 and small scale housing units under 62625 or SROs are exempt from park fees. So you're, you're talking and is this is this only on big projects? Is this going to be only on big projects?

I think you have to have a certain density to use this small scale local density bonus program in the first place.

That's correct. I'll ask Stephen to confirm.

That's correct. Yeah, the project would have to be at least 45 units per acre and have to meet some other criteria as to average maximum unit size. But that's for the small scale program. I mean, what's on the table here doesn't actually specify that in the table. So I would defer to Commissioner Buckbinder to clarify if it was the if it would be your intention to apply this only for projects which are qualifying under small scale housing unit density bonus program or just any small unit, irrespective if they're exercising that program.

This is intended specifically for the small scale housing unit program.

And small scale housing program is what?

I could speak to it in broad strokes. So when we updated the city's density bonus and inclusionary ordinances, and among other things that we'd include in the housing element, we spoke to the broad array of programs the city has implemented to try to help produce more affordable housing. We came up with a program that effectively reduces your inclusionary obligation when you're providing small units. So this is the idea of like affordable by design. So when you have units that are 625 square feet or smaller, then those would qualify you for an additional bonus unit, which would not be subject to city's inclusionary ordinance. Additionally, we just captured this concept of SROs, but that wasn't, I would say, the primary intent of the program. The idea was just capturing, if you're building half the size as typical, you're getting pretty much twice the units and half the affordability. And that program has been largely successful, although we haven't seen projects built. We've had a lot of developer interest in it, including with the Cressley project, the Barbano project,

and as well as another project of the creekside business uh parker business on on bascom avenue uh intends on using the program as well okay now i know what you're talking about um and i just want to say that i'm not totally against the idea of reducing or eliminating exempting park fees on on these items my question though is whether or not it has any significant impact whether or not in a typical project where there might be some of these small units, the amount of money that is saved, whether it's going to make a big difference to the developer to pencil out or not, I don't know what the answer to that is. And I will say that the pro forma, I got a real problem with the pro forma example, because I don't think that's, in my opinion, a good example, but I might be wrong.

One of the things I don't know if that Rob shared with me, and I don't know if they were okay with you sending it out, but the conclusion from an actual commercial real estate developer that plugged all this into their own model was that, as I said at the top line, these policies get us from being 300 basis points away from a project penciling to 100 basis points away from a project penciling. I can try and pull the exact breakdown, but they each do a chunk of the work.

That's based on a certain ratio. I mean, the pro forma shows 100 units of 900 and 100 units of under 600.

I've never seen anything. That's the current type of proposal that the Barbano project is doing. I think it's 146 of each. Who's doing that? Barbano, the ones at the former Shell station, the corner of Campbell and Vasquez. So you're 50-50?

Oh, okay. I didn't know that. One other thing I want to add is when you're talking SROs, If the bathrooms and kitchens are the most expensive part of the house to build. So if you don't have to build as many of those, but you can build bedroom, bedroom, bedroom, bedroom, bedroom, the overall project cost comes down. You sleep more people. Of course, they have to share the bathroom and the kitchen. But bathroom and kitchen are the most expensive part.

Now, I understand what an SRO is, and I understand what you say. I've just never seen an SRO in the city. Okay.

But just answering the question you ask, you know, does it make sense? It does. It is cheaper.

Any other questions on this item? Commissioner Olney, any?

Yeah, one comment. Yeah, please. If the two-month thing is really an impact, I'd be willing to propose we meet more often to take the edge off of that.

okay but it's not just the time it's also the money they have to spend to come here in prison yeah i'm just what it's worth yeah okay uh i would like to take us to public comment because we can still deliberate plenty after that so with that uh do we have speaker cards or how we how are we doing this

I do have a couple people that approached me. If you want to go, Susan, and then afterwards, the young lady at the back, and then we'll move forward.

Speakers have up to two minutes. Please identify yourself as you start.

Okay, before I start, I want to ask that Adam Bookbinder recuse himself further from this conversation. He has made numerous biased statements to me and to others. He aggressively approached me after a meeting a few months ago, telling me, we must get rid of the park fees. We must do this. And now he's sitting here doing the same thing. I don't think it's fair. I don't think he's objectable. And he's already stated when I approached him at a meeting after that Rob and Matt were at and a friend Roy was at, he admitted that he should not have said that and he apologized. Well, it's too late. He did say it. He is biased and he's to me doing it again tonight. And he has expressed this on numerous occasions. And I think he needs to recuse himself further from this conversation.

Thank you.

That's not my two-minute speech. That's my prelude to my two minutes.

Okay, well, you still have your timer going, so go ahead.

He has expressed bias. He was aggressively approaching me, and I don't appreciate what he did, and I don't think it's fair that he continues to be part of this conversation. Now I'm going to say my part about it. I do not agree getting rid of any Park Blue fees. The report to me is very one-sided. You take cities like Germany and Los Angeles and Seattle, that has nothing to do with Campbell. It's not even close to our size. It looks like you've thrown everything at the wall to see what sticks. There's blanket statements, there will be no increase to utilities. Well, SB 79 was not part of the housing element. SB 79 is almost gonna double our population. There was no assessment of the utilities by anybody saying that that would not be a problem. and then under the park and loo fees no way get rid of them we're looking at a 15 to 18 million dollar pool project we've got 30 million dollars potential other things to do here at the community center and the examples say oh well you know it would be four six but now we're down to 2.3 million well there's no discussion in there what the hit is to the city it just says that it's like okay well what impact is that there's no analysis that says what that does to our budget. And you've already heard from Rob, most of the staff doesn't support this idea. So leave the in lieu fees alone. And you guys can argue about the two month. I think that's crazy in the grant. I'm working on projects right now that are four or five years. And this is your one chance for the public to make a comment. Having it be one month or two months to me is important to have the public make that comment. And I appreciate you having to meet more often. don't get rid of in lieu fees don't get rid of the inclusionary don't change that and adam needs to recuse himself thank you uh i uh can just get an opinion from the city attorney here sure as to whether or not you need to recuse yourself

Yes, please. Do you have any questions about what she brought up?

Do you have any questions for her?

No, for me.

Oh, for you. So you would need to recuse yourself if you had a financial conflict of interest in any of these decisions. If you lived within a certain radius of any project, which there's no specific project before us right now, it's citywide concern. So no, this is not a situation. I have not seen a situation where you need to recuse yourself at this point.

Thank you. And to be clear, my only financial stake in this is that if housing becomes more affordable in Campbell, the value of my home will go down. That is the limit of my financial stake in this. So I will not be recusing myself. Thank you. You've had your comment.

It would be my recommendation that we stick to public comments and move on to the next.

Can I comment? Go ahead. Okay, so, um, Adam and I have been on the Planning Commission for exactly the same amount of time. We've been on the Planning Commission exactly six years. We don't always agree, okay? But we've always been cordial. And I've actually expressed to him, both during the meetings and actually outside the meetings, some of my differences. You know, and I respect Susan, and I know her, but, you know, bias, everybody has bias. There is nobody who is totally objective. Whether it's a politician or whether it's a volunteer on the commission or whether it's a person just on the street, everybody has a bias. I lean less... I'm an affordable housing advocate, but I'm not as extreme, I'm not as strong an advocate for stronger measures as Adam is. However, I think he has a right to have those positions and to express them. It doesn't mean we have to accept them. Now, what he did in terms of being impolite or whatever off the commission, that's to me a separate issue. I don't think it deserves him being recused. There might be something that in a complaint to the city, something could be done. But to me, he has a right to take a position of his own. I mean, clearly, I think most of the commissioners on this who have been here for a while recognize Adam's position on housing. And that is he has the strongest advocacy in favor of building housing. No, he has a strong advocacy of building both affordable and market rate housing. And I'm more tendency to look at affordable housing. But what I'm saying is that everybody has bias. People have biases in this that I'm not so sure here, but would not support housing, okay? So I don't think that's a problem. I don't think bias is a problem. Everybody has a bias. It's just a matter of hearing out people and then making your own decision based on the facts that we get. And I think we have, everybody on this commission is an independent thinker. and has a right to express their bias, their position on a particular issue. So I'm sorry if something happened between Susan and Adam, but that's not, I don't think that applies to whether or not he should be recused from the commission.

That's all I have to add. Okay, thank you. Do you have anything to add? Yes, please. Okay. Let's keep it tight because, again, I would like to get to actual public comment on the issue we're talking about tonight. Thank you.

Commissioner Buchbeiner, I know the word bias is being thrown around, but I believe a better word is opinion. And I believe you came to your opinions the way you came to your opinions. And I respect them. I may not agree with them, but I don't think you deserve that. And I wanted you to hear that for the record.

Thank you. If anyone wants to see how I came to my opinions, there's footnotes.

Okay, Commissioner Kamkar, and then we're really going to public comment.

I see our role as dual role, one in one. We put our hat and we judge things. We cannot be biased during those types of decisions. but then we take our hat and we become advisors to the city council and advisor city. We can absolutely have an opinion and have a bias because that's our role. That's the responsibility we've been given is advise us. How do you think we should manage the city? So I agree with both of my colleagues. Thank you. Thank you. Okay.

And now thank you, sir. The next speaker. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Jim Sullivan. I'm a 22 year resident of Campbell. And some of you recognize me from having two projects, actually three projects approved here in the city with another one kind of coming up, all essentially for sale townhome projects. The market is strong for those. Right now, and I want to point out that I think it was four or five years ago when we started Llewellyn Avenue, you know, I think at the time, the highest density in Campbell on your books, you know, I know that there was some stuff that was built beforehand was like 27 units per acre. So when you did this last round of the housing element in order to get all of the housing units that you wanted to, you had to look, start, you know, plugging in 45 units, 60 units, you know, upwards of 80 units. Campbell wasn't really known for that in the past, right? San Jose was, you know, other cities wore Milpitas. I did some, you know, super high density stuff there by the BART station, right? And I love Campbell. Campbell's a great place to live. And I think eventually it will catch on. I really do. But I have to tell you, even in those other cities, two projects that I have, one in Milpitas, approved for 350 odd apartment units. We downzoned it to 108 townhomes, right? Because the 350 apartment units weren't going to be built. out right by Valleyfair or whatever, Westfield, the AgriHood project, 160 apartment units. All market rate, by the way, we're downzoning it to 44 townhomes. That's what can be built right now. So it's very difficult. I'm a strong, so if you want to promote that, I think I commend Commissioner Bookbinder and CAMCAR spending all this time looking at it. How can we make this happen? Even if it's on a temporary basis, kind of, you know, kick the wheels loose. But I'm really kind of excited. about rob and his team working with the nonprofit builders that's how you're going to get your arena numbers for the low income and and very low income units and how you do that is the city has to have money and i was a big proponent you guys were revising your affordable am i past my time One more minute. Okay, thank you. Your affordable housing ordinance. So you're not allowed to fee out of your affordable housing ordinance the way things stand and the way things previously were. I think it happened one time with somebody who built like seven units or eight units and he paid a fractional amount and it was super low. So you change that amount. You can now fee out a fractional unit. So if it's 0.5 or less, you pay a fee. And then if it's above 0.5, you round up to the next unit, which is ridiculous. You should just have a fractional fee for anything in between. Furthermore, if you said we allow you to do, you know, Every developer, all four of my projects, I would provide 10% on site because that gets me the density bonus and that's important. But I would have feed out of the other 5%, even though it's a commiserate or whatever, the same amount. And I just counted it up. So the Llewellyn project, 17 units affordable. six of the units i could have feed out of that would have uh and then the virginia avenue project six units affordable two of the units i could have uh uh feed out of that would have been 6.4 million dollars in the city's projects my other two projects hamilton avenue and i have another one on campbell avenue five units would generate uh four million dollars in revenue so those four projects townhome projects rob would be sitting with 10.4 million dollars in his hand and you could do a lot of help i don't you know i mean with basically 13 units or eight plus five yeah 13 units not being built but having $10.4 million.

Thank you. I imagine people will have questions for you. So Commissioner Kamkar. Thank you. So would you have been okay with paying that fee up front?

Yeah, the fee is typically, I mean, you know, nobody wants to pay it like when the final map is approved, but it's typically built into either prior to the first certificate of occupancy. So, I mean, it's going to be a guaranteed fee. I mean, the project's not gonna get built without the fee being paid.

Yeah. Okay, so you would have been okay with having to pay that fee before the first certificate of occupancy gets issued to you? Yes. Thank you.

So I just want to be clear on this. You're saying that we only allow the fractional, but we don't allow you to pay it out

in lieu of the 15 to get down to 10 right now is that what you're saying correct i mean i could do i could i could request something it would take a uh develop development agreement you know would basically go through the city if we were to consider redoing that so that it's still 15 but you could

pay in lieu fees, get it to 10%. That would be what you're suggesting. Is that correct?

Yeah. So right now, if I do, you know, a certain number of units and my amount is, you know, the number of units that requires to be built is like 6.4 units on site. Your current fee says that 0.4 can be paid in lieu fee. Or the developer can add an extra unit, which no developer would. They would pay the 0.4. Most cities allow you any fractional interest, right? So if it's 0.8, right, if my requirement is 6.8 units, get the fee, get the 0.8 all in fees. You know, the developer still can, you know, do an extra unit, but every developer is going to pay 80% rather than providing another unit. And it puts money into the city's hands, which Rob and his staff can then, you know, relay into actual units being built by some of these 100%.

The money that you're talking about, what are you talking about? that would have come in if you could have just done 10% and paid for the additional ones and blew up.

So that becomes a big number. Yes, that's the bigger number, not the fraction.

Are other cities allowing this kind of thing? They go from 15 to 10 and paying the in lieu?

Every planning director that I talk to, and I propose that too, they say, that's a great idea. And yeah, no, you should talk to our council about it or development agreement. All right. Campbell could be the first. I mean, other cities do allow you to fee out with council approval. you know, because they want the money. But developers nowadays, at least for the projects that I'm doing, want to do at least 10% on site to get the, you know, the density bonus protection. Thanks. Yeah. And then I'm just sorry. Just one more thing to just touch base on is right now the affordable housing ordinance that you guys have is for a for sale project is 9% moderate and 6% low. And for rental, it's low and very low. I think similar percentages. You're the only city that does that with my knowledge. Most cities just say if it's for sale, it's 15% moderate. If it's rental, 15% low. And the few cities that break it down, no, we want some moderate and low, do 10% moderate, and 5% low, because I need to do 10% of one category in order to get the density bonus. So even though I'm doing 9% moderate, and 6% low, on all of my sites, the city says, Yeah, you don't get density bonus, give me 10% in one of the categories, which is really doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Okay.

Go ahead. One more question. Okay.

Thank you very much. Thank you. The person in the back and then the thank you.

Thank you. If you could please identify yourself. Welcome.

Good evening. My name is Po. I'm with Alpha X. We're a local developer committed to bringing achievable quality home ownership option to family in the Bay Area. I know it's a very heated topic today, and I want to stand here tonight to support the subcommittee housing streamline recommendations. i know we have a lot of discussion on different items but we want to show our supports because we all know campbell needs housing especially multi-family homes in the central area but in reality on ground when we run our pro farmer it is very hard with the high interest rate soaring construction costs that are stalling projects that we are ready to go um this proposal gives the city three practical tools that we think um to help this store project moving ahead without causing um taxpayer and other other costs first the administrative approval that we talked about um the co-compliance project saves two months on carrying costs which save us hundreds of thousands of dollars while the whole project is suggested still keeping the neighbor neighbors in the loop which we think is very reasonable um the right sizing inclusionary zoning for the stack flat matters because unrealistic requiring for the number on papers doesn't make the project works if we cannot finance it then zero building is being built market rate or affordable So adjusting this rate, we think it can help the financing doable and we can actually get the shuffles in the ground. Also, we talk about the parkland, the park fee exemption from micro unit. We think it's good for smaller homes that we can treat them as the same way as the ADU. So it can encourage the entry level and naturally the affordable options. Alpha X, we want to build the homes to our local workers that they need. So we

really like to see all the discussion tonight and hope hopefully this will move forward thank you thank you thank you next thanks for coming tonight hello my name is missy brenner i'd like to talk about the park fees and i have four points first We've talked about the ADUs that are exempt from park fees. But in general, ADUs are on a property that has some sort of outdoor space, if only a shared outdoor space with the main dwelling on the property. I don't actually think it's a comparable situation to a stacked flat or other denser building project where you're in a hallway and you may or may not have outdoor space to be um as part of that project i'm sure it's wildly expensive for developers to include rooftop park areas or playgrounds or other things like that and they're constrained obviously by the site that they're working with so One thing that concerned me to this evening is comparability to the ADU provision is really the only justification we've heard tonight or seen in the report for exempting micro units from the park fees. And I don't think it is a strong justification. Second, the report has about five sentences on park fees. I may have miscounted, please correct me if I'm wrong, but it's page two, there's a couple describing the proposal. There's a couple that span pages three and four of the report. And then there's the line item in the pro forma. Again, the ADU rationale is the only one presented. I'm concerned that exempting park fees is being swept up into some of these other measures without having received quite as much diligence as some of these other measures have. There's no footnotes for those sections. It's not clear to me that other cities have tried to implement this and had success, or that it's really moving the needle in a substantial way. Third, Looking at the pro forma, it mentioned 200 units, half of which are 600 square feet, micro units, half of which are 900. I asked Google, sue me, that what is around the average cost of selling a 600 square foot unit. It thought it was $500,000. I don't know if that's true, but if we call it 400,000 for all those 200 units, even though only half of them are micro units, that would be $80 million. The pro forma reported $58 million in hard costs, which I'm assuming does not include fees. That would be a $22 million margin. If the park fees are reduced by, I think it said it would save $2.3 million with the exemption, $2.3 million to the city is a sixth of the cost of the estimated pool replacement. It's not a sixth of that margin. And I think that even when you look conservatively at each step of the math, as presented in this pro forma, which has a number of assumptions, money is more impactful for the city and if i understood um the developers that i appreciate coming here to speak to us today it wasn't clear to me either that the park fees are really what is preventing development from going forward it sounded like from mr sullivan that the projects that are capable of getting built are larger than was that my time yeah one more sentence one more sentence larger than um the ones that the park fees would be helping So I would just ask to please look more carefully at this. People in small spaces need outdoor space, and Campbell punches way above its weight with our parts. I think we can do better for people. Thank you.

Good question. Go ahead. Yeah, there's a question for you. Sorry. No problem. No problem.

So I noticed that you have been here for most of the proceedings, and we spoke about in the report that with the current requirements, units are not getting built. If units are not built, you were not getting the park fee. you know so um we can set the percentage at whatever we want if we're not getting the units built then it's not working we just like you are advocates of getting more parks and more other activity and you know um and so what we're i guess recommending is to change the formula so we can get some park fees do you have any do you have any opinion as to maybe lowering maybe lowering the fee per unit or lowering the requirements on which units get to pay would produce more money maybe not from each unit but from overall you know do you have any opinion on that or um and you you don't have to it's just a question no i think two two things in response to that first um

I think it could be reasonable to look at a reduction, but I think we don't have that information in front of us. I personally would oppose a reduction, but I could understand if the city wanted to look at that. What I haven't seen is data showing how much that has helped in comparable cities, whether we're currently charging more in park fees than other cities, that kind of information that we do have available for some of the other proposals we've heard this evening. And that is what gives me cause for concern. Before I say my second thing, I see a finger.

Yes, if I may. So when we, I believe in the pro forma that we got from the commercial real estate folks, the impact of rightsizing our inclusionary zoning policies was about equivalent to the impact of reducing our park fees. that all the policies together move about 200 basis points out of 300. And I can try and get you the exact numbers. They didn't consent for that to be shared because it involved internal models, but that's roughly what the impact is.

I understand, although black box math, just generally, I understand consent and confidentiality.

I tried to put together a pro forma myself. I ran into a lot of this stuff as confidential. It was like, I wound up doing a lot of assumptions and I figured having professionals do it was probably better, but this is a lot of black box stuff. Yeah.

It seems surprising to me that the park fees may, that would, would have a commensurate impact with the inclusionary zoning. I know a lot less about inclusionary zoning, so I don't really want to speak too much to that, but I did think it was interesting that we didn't hear about the park fees as a very prominent concern or with other justifications this evening than it being conceptually comparable to the ADUs. only other point i wanted to make is just if i am a caterer and i can feed 50 people i love your bird example and it made me think of this if i can feed 50 people and i don't have a project going i would still be very hesitant and careful before i take a project for 100 people and i think if we welcome more people into the city we should be absolutely prepared that they're going to want to use our parks and services to the same full extent that the rest of us do and so the something over nothing I understand, but I'm just not sure it works in this context. And thank you very much for listening to me.

Oh, thank you for speaking tonight. Thank you very much.

Next speaker.

And chair, after the folks in the public speak, we do have one person online.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Okay. My name is John Pringle. I'm here representing The Barbano project, I've been before you numerous times. I've been speaking at hearings for five years about park fees here. They are a significant issue. But overall, I want to go a couple things. Number one, we pay about $9,000 a year. Property taxes on these two sites will be paying $2 million a year, of which $200,000 a year will go to the city, just to add to that. Our average household income is going to be I don't know, $150,000 a year, and I guarantee you $25,000 of that's going to be spent by our renters here in the city of Campbell. And that's going to generate a minimum of another million dollars a year of sales tax. Now, I'm sorry we're not getting sales tax today because of this terrible lawsuit, but the day will come. Fire protection, we are putting in state-of-the-art fire. I don't think that's going to be anything. Police protection, we need it. We're spending $2 million on swimming pools, spas, fitness centers, and 13,000 feet of common area lounge space for our residents. We're contributing to their amenity load. The problem is very well articulated by the study done for this group three years ago, City of San Francisco. We are absolutely a couple hundred basis points off of feasibility. I appreciate The change in direction here, I'm not sure we're prepared to do a 15% affordable rate on our non-small units. Right now, just so you know, the discount would be $2,400 a month per unit for eternity. So that equates to about a $6.5 million reduction in value of the project upon completion. So we pay that off. Then you throw in park fees of another $6 million. So that's $12 million. So park fees, I'm penciling out for park fees on our traditional size units, not on the small units. The small units, we're giving a huge discount and compromising the project to build smaller units than we want to make. But we're headed in the right direction. I have the largest debt and equity firm, probably the third largest in the United States working on our project, trying to figure out a $180 million project. I'm telling you, it's extremely difficult. And best case I see, we're about 150 basis points off right now.

Sorry, is that under current policy or with the proposed changes?

That's where the That's where the proposed changes.

And how far off were you without the proposed changes, we're not going to mess with we're not going to build it.

So,

Sorry, sorry. Do you mean more 5%?

I mean, we'll be at a we're not going to hit a we might hit Yeah, that 10 and a half 11% IRR with with under the old policy, but I've adjusted on the I've assumed with the new policy of 15% split between 50% AMI and 80% AMI, and that's good. Now I see from staff going back to, this is a new number for me that I have to run, but it's 7% inclusionary zoning at 50% AMI. I've got to rerun those numbers. Well, that's the proposal.

Sorry, to be clear, when you say 100, so you say with this proposal, it still does not pencil, but it's closer?

It's closer. It's definitely closer. Obviously, we're expecting rents to keep going up, and what's going to happen is if it doesn't work, you're just not... I don't know anybody else that wants to do this. I'm not in a silo. I'm looking at deals that have happened in Sunnyvale, Mountain View, San Francisco, San Mateo. Mr. Sullivan said, this is, you know, the smart person just puts for sale on this site. It goes back to a townhome project that's much more lucrative. But I will say, as a final point, I'm interested in negotiating an in-lieu fee. Because instead of a $6 million hit to our value, I can probably justify $3 to $4 million in-lieu fee. So you add that to Mr. Sullivan's projects, and you guys have real money to play with. This is what San Jose's done. This is what Pleasanton's done. I negotiated in Luffy for 350 units in Pleasanton and it worked, worked for all parties. Right.

So how many units are you... It's up to 250 or something like that. 323. Oh, it's 323 now.

Yeah.

Because you added the extra place where the hotel is. Right. So it's 323. And you're saying that that's divided equally between small size and regular size?

Right, right. So we created... Originally, we came in, we had a hotel site. In that building, we put... We change our architecture. We've added smaller units for simplicity's sake. We put them on that side. It'll be one phase. It's going to be one phase. We upgraded our amenity load to, as I said, pretty close to 15,000 feet of amenity space for our residents.

So 15% is you're like 45, 48, or 50 below market rate units? I'm at 15% of 50% of that.

Because we've got the local density. 22 or 23 units. 22 or 23 units. Right. Okay, and how many are moderate versus low or whatever? I run them in different methods, but my latest iteration was half at 50% of AMI and half at 80% of AMI. 15% of AMI is a $2,500 mouth reduction in market rents for eternity. And this is what lenders don't like. But you know, I'm not clear on the,

You know, the affordable ranges are a range, you know, so it's 50 to 80 and 80 to 120. And so when they determine a rent, I'm under the impression they determine rent based on the person that's going in there and what their household income is.

Yeah, but you take an average.

You take an average, right? So the 50 is really not 50, it's really 65.

Your team gives you a schedule. We have a scandal with the household side. We assume, you know, two people or one and a half people per one bedroom, one person per studio, you know, three or four. You average out the range.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It comes out pretty. Now, if instead of, instead of, Say, so you're saying that you get closer if on the small units, the park fees are exempted.

You're saying you're getting- Yeah, and I've taken park fees out. Out. And I've told Rob that it's not gonna get built with park fees on those units. We're not gonna do it. The owner had said that pretty clearly. Okay, so even if we gave you a discount, No. It's going to be zero. Yeah. You know what? I'm not to capital markets, guys. This is so much harder. When I started managing property in Campbell in 1987 for Prometheus Development Company, I wanted to join Avalon Bay, the apartment communities we built here in Campbell. You know, it was never this hard as it is today.

Never.

Never. and uh i negotiated in luffy for a project i own in downtown san jose and this you know then i find out that 20 projects got waived all inclusionary requirements rob didn't report on that because that's old news and i believe they all got way park feeds and i i couldn't look it up why we're sitting here but It's either get apartments built or not, unfortunately, along the lines Mr. Bookwalter said. But, you know, we're trying to do this.

So do you do, I assume you do various machinations on the size of the units and the number. So, you know, if you're 50-50 on 900 and 600, I assume you also looked at a different ratio for bigger ones and bigger. and not so many smaller ones to see if there's a better matchup.

We'd rather build larger square foot apartments. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Because they're more popular. So what we did is we went back and redesigned and crammed down. We came up with a plan for 300 and some odd units. And then when the issue came up on small units, which I thought was an interesting idea, we went back and changed half the project because I didn't think this will work if we don't do this.

Question. You said that, like, with the proposal, you were looking at 15% inclusionary rate. The proposal is for a 10% inclusionary rate, which, if you do half small units, in effect, is 5%.

Your point is correct. I need to run those numbers, and I haven't run it. In fact, this little addendum is the first time I saw it was right before this meeting.

Okay. If you're just going to, like, throw it against the wall, how much closer to penciling out does that get you?

Not sure. I don't want to throw it against the wall. That's fair. In a public hearing. I'm worried about my fees overall from the city. You know, I have all the other fees. You know, I've assumed they're going to pay park fees in my underwriting for the standard size units. So I've left that alone. I know the city wants park fees, but I also know I don't think we're going to impact that, but I've left it in there. I'm trying to find other things that will move, which would be construction taxes and certainly the inclusionary housing ordinance is the biggest negative. And just what San Francisco found, just what they published, it's the reason units are not being built.

Thank you. Okay, sorry. A couple more questions. Okay, so the 15%, 10%. Mr. Sullivan's opinion was if he had to pay 15%, he would rather do 10% of the units on-site and then fee out for the extra 5%.

What is your opinion? No, I'd rather fee out for the whole thing. But if you don't have that choice, let's say you either build 15% or... Well, I'm going to do what's most favorable for our underlying economics to raise the capital we have to raise. We have to raise another $60 million in equity that we want to stay in this project for 20 years. So $180 million project, our ownership wants to stay in the project through the next generation. This is not a build and sell for my owners, which is highly unusual. This is a build and hold. So we're looking for $60 million of real cash.

Okay. So you might end up building the 15% if that was the requirement rather than fee out of the 5%.

Uh, if I did, if I did a mixed bag, I might do a mixed bag. Yeah. Of, of, of in Luffy and other. Okay. I think to be honest with you, for you, you guys figure out in Luffy's, it's the best attractor tour for affordable housing developers. Yeah. San Jose is doing it. I had a project. Under contract, Citi offered them $8 million for 150 units. Now, Rob has explained to you, they have a lot more money because of other taxes. But affordable guys, it's a very complex business. I don't know anything about it. Maybe Jim does. But they layer on tax credits. They layer on subsidized bond financing. And they get really close. And Citi's closed the gap by writing the check. And I see you being very attractive. Then you get 100% affordable projects.

Thank you. Commissioner Hall, any question?

Hey, thanks for coming down.

You're welcome. Thank you.

I appreciate your presence every time. Wait, wait, I got one for you.

Oh, he has a question too.

Okay. If I could, and I did, offer you in lieu, in exchange for public access to your gyms and pools, would you do it?

uh no because we you know i'm putting extra parking in over and above required for our residents and i don't think i want non-residents we'll probably have 450 people living there i assume 323 households that's my my 25 000 household number but we're going to have 400 and some odd people there yeah i get that it's a it's a negative But if I said no parking requirements for the public, but just simply. I wouldn't do that. It's secure. We're security oriented. You know, we're going underground, very expensive. People can walk across to the prune yard, walk down the Whole Foods, walk to downtown. Yeah, I just I'm just trying to sell. You know, if you ask me, would I put memberships open to the public? Maybe. Yeah. memberships yeah like a certain number and they pay they pay a fee yeah a reasonable fee and then you wouldn't mind i've done that before there you go so it kind of does work it did it didn't work well because but i've done that yeah okay that's it that's okay we good okay thank you thank you thank you very much do we have one more speaker

and then our person online as well if you could identify yourself good evening commission staff thanks for being here and being late with us uh sorry to chris online i'm stealing his thunder a little bit uh my name is joe brenner i'm a campbell resident i grew up here i'm also a business owner here one thing i'd really like to caution us from doing is looking at this as an all-or-nothing proposition it's very clear from the developers here that the in lieu fees and inclusionary zoning there's some real kind of meat to be had there campbell's not always got a great reputation as to how friendly it is for businesses working in the city. And this is a really good opportunity to improve those relationships, improve that reputation, and really get some meaningful traction on getting housing built, whether it's affordable or not. I'm a big proponent of housing. I built houses with my dad as a kid. I built houses with the Habitat for Humanity project. I'm really big on making sure that everybody has a place to live because that's a cornerstone of any society. I would caution us to not jump into abandoning the parks fees. Because ladies and gentlemen, we're what, 200 feet from the closed pool project? And Campbell's got a revenue problem. I don't think we should hamstring ourselves in unnecessary ways in terms of us being able to generate revenue for projects that the public really cares about. You see it on social media. People are upset about the pool being closed. Outreach meetings are well attended. And as has been demonstrated, pools being built for private usage does not translate to public usage. We have at risk individuals in Campbell. We have seniors. We have families here already that made great use of the pool and they can't now. Getting in the way of that, I think, would be a grave misstep. I think we should start with the the in lieu fees, the inclusionary zoning. Maybe we look at kind of streamlining the process for particularly anything that's going to be ministerially zoned for the first proposal. But park fees, I'd really like to see if we could get away from that at first. That doesn't work and it doesn't get housing built. Maybe we have to revisit. But for now, I'd really like to see us keep our park fees intact. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, and last but not least, I see we have Chris Lindsey on the Zoom.

Hey, can you hear me? Hey, welcome. Hi, this is Chris Lindsey, Campbell resident, homeowner, former renter. And I went through the whole proposal that was posted on the city website. I'm just going to say I'm in favor of all three proposals that are written up. I think they do take a step in the right direction towards making housing more able to be built in Campbell, which we sorely need. I think following up a couple of points specific to like the streamlining, the first proposal, I know there's some skepticism about the, you know, just two months really make a difference, but I think you heard multiple voices from developers saying that it really does matter just in terms of one time, time is money, as well as just availability over and just uncertainty and capital markets don't like uncertainty or, you know, delays as well. So I do think that does have a material impact. And the second proposal with inclusionary zoning, I think just, it sounds like from the developers that we've heard from, like developing is quite an elastic, you know, like price sensitive thing. market and anything we can do to lower that cost will help bring in basically develop more more housing i think that's important um and while it sounded like it was concerned there was sort of like a zero-sum game that if we reduce them out the inclusion zone requirement that would lead to fewer affordable housing. But I think the argument there is instead that by lowering the cost, we can increase the amount of development being made and that will then hence yield more projects that'll yield more inclusion or more below market rate housing. And also just, I think this also noted in the report that just housing supply in general does, just of any type, goes a long ways towards providing affordable housing across all income bands. And so even if it's not quite marked as inclusionary zoning or de-restricted, just by having more housing allows people to live in the places that they can actually afford. That's all, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. and there is no other humans to speak in the chamber so i will close public comment uh since i think we might take a minute to deliberate on this i would propose we take a three minute bio break and then reconvene all right come back at 9 12.

folks want to reconvene have a good night thanks so much thank you I'll see you guys in a couple of months thanks Jim alright reconvening the meeting 9.13pm so we have this

item and uh i think we should decide what our next step is um i have i have a straw man proposal but i'm also not on the subcommittee so if the subcommittee wants to react to all the discussion and do you want to change anything about your original recommendation to recommend all three items based on the discussion.

I'll check to see if Matt's okay with this. And I also have a proposal for how we proceed with this. I would like to propose in addition to what's on the page, pros allowing developers of smaller projects to fee out the last 5%. Sounds like the city really needs the cash. And like that would be a better balance both for the developers and for the city. So smaller townhome sized projects which have the 15% inclusionary rate would do 10% on site and have the option to fill out the last 5%. That would be an addition. The proposal I would have for how to do this is we have like a limited amount of discussion then do like a show of hands rate vote on each of the I guess at this point for proposals. And that's what gets pushed to city council. Makes sense to me.

I have a different proposal than that.

You can do it differently by all means.

Okay. So I think where I'm at is, and this is my own opinion, and everyone should have their own opinions. I think... The feedback I've given the whole time is I want to make sure that I understand the impact of whatever we're signing ourselves up for. So I'm not comfortable with these going directly to council. I'm comfortable with them first going to staff to then flesh out like on like, as an example, on the first one, I could be supportive of the first one depending on the thresholds. But prior to sending anything to council, I would want to see what is the threshold? How many projects have we gotten like that? was the comment like because i i can't like generically pass that on without that and um so that's what i would do on the first one uh on inclusionary housing discussion i think based most on staff's recommendation and the public comment we heard i would love staff to further flesh out the in luffy proposal again is something that we could discuss at some future meeting as as a proposal And then on park fees, I want to know like netting out like what are we saying here? Because I think and Missy Brenner spoke on this, like we sort of have a vague like upside of what this might do for more units. But like I would really want to like math the whole thing out of if we did this, you know, net positive to the city's housing target or revenue, but like the park fee impact. So again, I could like really say like what am i voting on so i i would not be comfortable sending that recommendation to council absent that and just sort of where i'm at on all of these i would not send them as a recommendation i would want staff to put in the work to really flesh these out before I would do it.

So I'm quite like, I'm in agreement on the, the first one, like staff will put together. Yeah. Um, I would trust to have a good job, but I can understand why something other than a pro forma from a developer describing what the change in like, um, in, in number of basis points is because that that's, I think the most quantitative we can guess. Yeah. You're talking about for the park fees one? For park fees and for the IZ changes. I don't have that for, obviously, for being able to fee out the last 5%. We just had the staff telling us that's a good idea and the developers telling us that's a good idea, which I think I'm comfortable with saying that's a good idea. But in terms of reducing our inclusionary zoning rate, like, I... I you have developers telling you that it's a It's a blocker. It's a significant changing that is it makes a significant change in the The internal rate of return. And I think there's the report that I think the economically ideal, the maximum economically feasible point in some places is zero. And we know the effect it has, like we have estimates of the effect it has. I'm not sure what other information is knowable at this point.

I'm trying to think of how to answer this without just saying the same thing again. I'm uncomfortable sending a recommendation that changes these numbers absent... like a full accounting of what we think this effect would be on like the city's various goals so i don't know precisely what targets i'm asking i don't think that's knowable like we can make up numbers but they're really not knowable i think it's bottleable more than this and again like since the item is are we voting on things recommending them to go to council what i'm saying is i would not do that with this document in this form, I would want it to come with staff doing the work to model out based on, again, the public comment we heard of like, what are we really signing ourselves up for?

If I seem like I'm being a little pushy, it's because I've been working on this since January. Is that modelable? Is that doable?

We could do analysis. So the question is, if the proposal was adopted, what would be the fiscal impact of the reduction in park fees? So, I mean, obviously there's assumptions with that that we'd have to make, but we could come back with the best numbers we could on that.

I think it's the two... There might be more than two parts. This is oversimplifying it, but it would be the fiscal impact on park fees. And then what do we think this does for the city's housing targets or property tax revenue? But just like we know that the Like on one end is the cost to park fees. What do we think the benefit would be to our housing targets? Something else. I mean, like, I just assumed, I assume for some of these other decisions, we've just had more of a, here's what we think the net would be than we have here. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, I, I guess I'd say this, um, I'll bring it up. So at this point, I do have two planners. Sure. So we could do some simple modeling, but I couldn't promise you a fiscal impact analysis of running four potential projects through what's a reduction in parks fees, what's a potential fiscal impact to the city in terms of property tax. I mean, that's something that we definitely could not model. But in terms of knowable projects potentially in the pipeline, what they would or would not pay in park fees, and going back in history five years to projects of this size and what we're paying park fees, I think that we could produce something like that.

So I want to just throw out from another perspective like one of my constraints here was i don't have staff time and i don't have budget so hence like i cannot hire a consultant to as an economist to do this kind of thing but what i can tell you is that we have had zero of these projects over the last five years and going from zero of these projects to some projects will go from projects of this size will produce no park fees, because there are none of them, to projects of this size will produce some park fees. It'll go from projects of this size produce no below market rate units, because they produce no units, to projects of this size produce some below market rate units and some market rate units. No, I mean, I remembered you said all this. So like the worst case is if this doesn't unstick anything, we have what we have now.

I understand that. And I'm going to let the other commissioner speak now. the thing that we said we were going to do in this section is take a roll call vote on sending this to council what i'm indicating is i would not do that what i would do is on the first item i would ask staff to come back with a recommendation that we could discuss first and then i would love to see the in lieu proposal because that's the one staff had brought up that i think we heard from a couple developers i'd love to see that one sort of fleshed out for us to discuss at this point and then i would like to see the park fee discussion that rob just mentioned and i understand that may take some time because we don't have staff time at this point but like for me in order to pass this on to council i need to see those things i'm not going to throw a recommendation over the wall absent those things that's where i'm at Commissioner Zisser and then Olney for the non-subcommittee folks.

All right. You want to go first, Joe?

I'll go first and defer to Zisser.

Well, can I say...

for commission is that we're doing this because you, Mr. Chairman said, I need a subcommittee to give me advice on, on residential zoning, you know, so we're doing this because of something you requested, you know, you know, so I just want to remind you.

Thank you. No. And I, I, I understand that, and I think things change over the course of the year in terms of how much staff we had available to support these projects. And when we did the subcommittee last time, before it went to... I'm basically advocating for the same thing you and I did two years ago, which is we did a bunch of legwork, and then eventually we got staff to turn it into an ordinance proposal and... steven did a bunch of work to make sure that our you know stuff was good and i wouldn't go to council prior to that is what i'm saying so i i don't think i'm actually saying anything different than how we did this two years ago and i'm glad that you all have looked at like i do appreciate that i'm just i'm just stating like where i'm at in terms of like how i would like it to proceed

so there's a significant difference between we'd like staff to flesh this out and make it into specifics and we would like staff to do some like consultant modeling type stuff i think staff may have a limited ability to do that i think they may have a limited ability to be doable but if you're talking about more i would like staff to flesh this out into a more specific proposal with you know what would look like a regular staff report that i fully agree with that The thing I don't want to have happen is that every time we meet with this, we think, well, this is radical. We should wait and gather more information. Again, I started in January. We've been gathering more information.

But maybe there's a compromise in that. I tend to agree that I wouldn't like to see the planning commission lose esteem and credibility by submitting to the council something that wasn't ready. At the same time, I'm getting a sense of volunteer burnout of doing a lot of work. So could we request funding to actually have some people do some real work on this?

No. I've asked. It's not available. Like, this is too bad. Yeah, that this is this is what we have. And like, we, at some point, you have to make a judgment with the information that you do have. And it would be great if we had perfect information would be great. If we had consultants, it would be great if we could spend, you know, six figures on getting a couple of economists to report on this. But I'm confident that it would not change the underlying conditions.

I listened to the chairman.

Well, I appreciate it. You don't have to do that. I know you've been working on it since January, but it is August, and this is the first time we've looked at this specific of a proposal. So I want to be clear, we haven't been reviewing anything this specific to actually debate on, and I don't think it's unreasonable that we would do more than one of these before doing it so i know you've been working on it since january but like we it's not like in march was our first meeting we looked at a proposal onto a number of forms yeah and for the record commissioner bookbinder is doing 90 plus percentage of the work just thank you okay so i've said a lot of where i'm at i would love alan yeah yeah

My turn? Yeah, please. So I'm going to preface this whole thing about, to be honest and totally upfront, is that I've never been enthusiastic about this project, but it wasn't my call. Because I think we're doing something that's over and above what kind of our responsibilities are. But the other thing is that when this first came up, we had been only a year, year and a half away from the fact that we'd already done this. That just a year, I don't know, two years ago, we got a chance to review, council got a chance to review, the planning department put forth ideas on how to improve the housing opportunity, okay? So there was a many, many months long process that came to the planning commission that the planners put in front of us and took to council, and it included much of of what we're talking about everything from park fees to inclusionary housing to changing all these things so my i didn't feel like this was necessary that that it had already gone through the process very recently on top of that um You know, it's not just Campbell's problem, as we've always talked about. This is a problem with 500 municipalities, okay? We're not the only guys that have this problem, okay? And the state has been extremely aggressive, as we all know, in the last three or four years of putting forth God knows how many laws associated with the housing crisis, okay? My take is the state has done more than I wanted them to do, okay? So I don't think Campbell needs to do more, okay? So in fact, I was on board with the state for a long, long time until a couple of more recent laws that I'm not so much on board with. That was SB 1123 and SB 79. I think they've gone way beyond reason, okay? But that's a whole other discussion. So I've never been enthusiastic about this. And Adam, we're not here to satisfy in all due respect, I know you put a lot of work in this, but in fact, you came up with a draft one month after this was assigned, but the very next month, it was like you had this six-page draft. Now, I understand that because this is what you like to do, but we're not We're not responsible for approving what you've spent eight or nine months on, just simply because you've spent eight or nine months on it, okay? If I'm not agreeable to it, I'm not going to be agreeable to it, okay? And so, that doesn't factor into anything. And the other thing is, I know you like to do this stuff anyway. so um uh my guess is that you were like really really into it but but that's beside the point but but here's my earth here's a couple things i want to talk about i think you've misframed this this whole problem you know you talk about uh projects are not are stuck uh and and um and that uh uh uh with the exception of, but the fact is the projects, with the exception of this gentleman's project, which I would love to have, I would hate for us to miss this because this is the only big rental project we have. And it would be a boon to the housing for Campbell. But I don't think we should formulate our process or our ordinances around getting one project, okay? So if we want to get this one project, and I don't know what the city's allowed to do, if we want to get this one project, we should negotiate this one project, okay, with the developer. And we should save doing new ordinances or changes for the bigger picture. One pro forma doesn't prove anything to me. And now as far as projects that are going on, you know, we have projects going on. We've got two East Campbell projects. We've got Mr. Pringle's project, hopefully. It's on the list. We've got the computer tech project. We've got the Llewellyn project. We've got the Latimer project. We've got the West Hamilton-San Tomas Expressway project, which is like 170 units. We've got East Campbell-Lee project, which is 70 units. We've got multiple small... multi-unit zoning starter home projects. We've got the Virginia Avenue project. That list is like 1,200 units that are in theory on the pipeline. And there's more to come. I just saw one that Jim Harrison put in for West Campbell Avenue, like where the Round Table Pizza is. and it's 40 or 60 units, okay? So there are projects in process. It's not enough projects to meet ARENA, but as you all know, I've said more than one time, we're not going to meet ARENA. And we're not going to meet it along with about 300 or 400 other municipalities, because yes, the math doesn't work. The developers aren't there. The ordinances, even with all the state laws that have come down, I'd like to see the 100% affordable projects get back on track. I don't know how to do that. We don't have the money to do that. The only thing I like in all this is the possibility of doing the 15 to 10 in lieu. That's the only thing that's particularly appealing to me, as the chairs also mentioned. I don't, and you know, just as an aside, you know, when you list the below market rate, it's not a static. It's not 50%. It's not 80%. It's a range. So if you're going to list it, you got to list the ranges from extremely low to moderate. There's four ranges, okay? It's not at 50%. It's not at 80%. I wish people would understand that better, including our commissioners. Okay. As far as your research, Adam, I looked at some of this research. And as Susan mentioned, what they're doing in Auckland, New Zealand, what they're doing in Germany, I'm not sure how applicable that is. And, you know, in the Auckland, New Zealand, this was about market rate housing reduces nearby rents. In Auckland Museum, the research said it was mixed and effects were modest. In Germany, it said 1% increase in supply, always rent by 0.2%. In New York City, high rise rentals, 10% increase in housing stock results in 1% decrease in rents. Minneapolis, when the rents were increased with new housing, None of this tells me that this says anything to support anything. It actually doesn't sound like it supports anything. The other thing I wanted to mention, which I've mentioned before, and the Portland one. The Portland example has nothing to do with Campbell. The Portland example was they had put in an ordinance that said, for buildings with 20 units or more, You really have to have BMRs. Buildings, not projects. So people started building projects with buildings that were 19 units. So you could have a project that had six buildings, each of 19, and they bypassed the BMR requirement. That's not what we have here. That's kind of a crazy thing. Now they repealed that. Okay? And now they're funding their BMRs with tax breaks of some sort. So the Portland example makes no sense at all. Okay? So, you know, I've never been... You know, from the very beginning when we talked about this and I learned about this, you know, I've never been a super advocate of BMRs in the first place, but it's like, okay, you're going to get something from it. But the math doesn't make it get you the RENA number. You can't build enough market rate units with BMRs to get even halfway there. You know, now it's something. but it really requires us to build fully affordable projects, okay? And that's what we should be focusing more of our attention on. The problem is we don't have the money, we don't have the land to help them with it, okay? And the last thing I want to say, just in general, so I'm in favor of the chair's position on taking this and letting planning Maybe make a couple of recommendations that they can bring back to us and then maybe we'll recommend it to the council. But, you know, my contention about all this stuff is, you know, we're building almost all townhomes. And we ought to talk about the missing middle. OK, some people talk about the missing middle, which means it's a variety of housing, cottages, duplexes, triplexes and townhomes. OK, but missing middle is associated with the economics, too. They're supposed to be affordable. Okay, otherwise missing middle doesn't mean anything. Yeah, you can build duplexes and triplexes and townhomes, but if the townhomes cost somebody $1.5 million, which is what they do in Campbell, the ones on Union Avenue that just got built that we approved a couple of years ago, there's seven little ones that are three stories. They're on the market for $1.4 million. The Llewellyn ones are on the market for $1.8 to $2 million. Okay? All the townhouses that we're building, which is most of what we're building, are going to be $1.5 to $2 million. You know what the... Household income is required for that. It's $300,000 to $400,000. That's 50% to 100% over the median income. That's not affordable. Affordable is supposed to be for people who are 50% or 80% or 30% of median income. And we're not hardly building any of that, which is why the last cycle we ended up with 33. This cycle, we potentially, if we were to do all the ones on my list here at this moment, including this gentleman's, we will have 140. low market rate units in the coming years, okay? And that's like one-tenth of the requirement for the RHNA, okay? So there's a really bigger problem than us fiddling around with this stuff. I don't believe any of this stuff will make a huge impact, and I don't know what the answer is.

If I can just just to clarify, do you believe that we're making with that the city is producing enough housing or that we need to produce more?

I just quick time check 940. That's a very open ended question. And I would love to get a short question.

Forget arena.

Do you think what we're producing now is enough for we need to produce more?

I think we have stuff in the pipeline that if it goes through, it's it has some meaningful impact.

So the rate of production that we've been going at is good enough or not. Some somewhat are not talking about Rena.

Okay. No, no, because, you know, we'll be lucky if we get halfway there. We'll be lucky if we get halfway to Rita, which would be 1,500 units. Okay? Now, we have a shot at that. And actually, I think, considering the last cycle we built 600, and the cycle before that we probably built 400 or 500, it certainly is an improvement. But, you know, the... The population of the county and the state has flattened over the last...

Right, because people are being displaced and we don't make places for them to live. I just, like, really straightforward. Are you... Hold on, please, just... Our vacancy rate is very low. That's why the prices are high. I'm straightforwardly like the project is intended to improve or increase housing production in the city of Campbell. Do you think that we should be trying to do that or not? Absolutely. Okay. Thank you.

Absolutely.

Okay. So it sounds like you. to state your position.

My position is aligned with yours. I don't see us approving something, certainly not tonight. And I don't think, I think it's a subset, a smaller subset of this. Okay. Commissioner Hawley.

Not in that. You probably should weigh in because there's two people on the subcommittee. There are two people who said – All right, well, here it goes. Yeah.

I hate to discourage people from doing the right thing.

Yeah.

And I keep coming back to it's hard to fight the Fed. The Fed sets interest rates, and a flip with the Fed is going to do more than the totality of everything we've discussed here. And income inequality is a civil rights issue of our time, and there's nothing we can do to deal with that. but we can sure pack Campbell full of people if we want to. So good luck.

Matt, do you want to go first?

If I can chime in on. So I hear my fellow commissioners this are saying we don't have any money and that's it. And well, we're trying to come up with a way to get the money. We're trying to come up with a way to the projects are not starting to give them a shot at do starting and create and generate the money that they would pay because they do pencil out. That's the whole that's the premise of these proposals. You know, you know, it's not it's that for only that purpose. to be able to get the money so we can get the money, build the affordable housing that you are so passionate about. Thank you.

Oh, and I think the in lieu fee thing, where they pay the last 5%, probably has far more impact than anything else if we were to change that.

Right, but that applies to larger density projects. There's Cambo is a smaller city, so you don't get too many of those happening. Anyway.

So just wanna address a few things, and I'd like to make a proposal. So first, I recognize that we are not Auckland, we are not Germany, we are not San Francisco. There is not another city of comparable size directly adjacent to us which has made these changes and we can crib from. But this does not mean we can know nothing. It is a constant, everywhere it has been looked, Everywhere it has been investigated that producing more market rate housing in a hot market reduces rate, reduces rents compared to the counterfactual. It would be extraordinary if this applied everywhere else, but the laws of economics stopped at the borders of Campbell. I don't think that's the case. I realize that there's kinds of information that we would like to know that we want to be cautious.

I don't think these other places are talking.

Auckland, Honolulu, San Francisco, Austin. Everywhere somebody has managed to do a test to say, hey, what happens where you build a new housing, it reduces rents compared to the counterfactual. I also went to a review article trying to review all of the various times this has been studied. If that actually did not happen, it would be a machine for making infinite money. If the rents never went down, you could just build and build and build and make infinite money. That would be pretty novel. I recognize that I'm asking people here to make judgment based on imperfect information. And we have a tendency to try and be cautious. And I remember specifically with the Kresley project, I remember it was first proposed in 2016 out of an abundance of caution. We said, I don't think this project is quite right. We'll punt on it. And we punted on it. And that's still a dirt lot today because we wanted to be cautious. Caution is not... free. Not doing anything is not free. And my frustration does not come from not wanting to do the work. I'm happy to do the work. I've been doing the work. I will continue to do the work. My frustration comes from having changed and adapted this and gotten every bit of information that is reasonably possible to get. And I think what people really want is to see how this affected, say, Los Gatos when they did this, but Los Gatos didn't do this. And No choice we make is going to be free. Yes, I suppose if we make changes, we'll be accountable for that. But I care less about taking the blame for something than I do about fixing the problem. And we can either choose to try and fix the problem or say... well let's be cautious and not do anything and that's exactly how we got where we are now in terms of what i want us to do i think commissioner fields is is right this could stand to be fleshed out by council so i would like to take the proposal four parts as exists have count sorry have staff um make it into a proper proposal it could go to city council and we will debate and decide on that based on what staff brings us i am i i will take that like i am not staff there are things that are not in proper legal language there and if we don't want staff to you know fill in the blanks for us i very much understand i think the way this should go is staff brings us back in a fleshed out way we debate that we send the parts we approve of to council and council votes on it

That's similar to what my position was. I think the only delta being and maybe this could be a prioritization to staff that I think commit this or and I are in the same place that the two we would prioritize first would be the in lieu fees. And then secondarily the streamlined permitting contingent on like what the threshold is. I would put those at the top.

Those seem like the less controversial items. Um, Does that seem reasonable? Sure. And this can be brought back piecemeal if staff can bring those back faster. I'm happy with that. Is that like if everyone's okay with that, we can do a straw poll and staff can bring that back to us as it's ready. Is that something staff is comfortable with doing? I realize that you do not have any of this on your work plan.

You do realize when it's ready is when it's ready. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I mean, and I say this, knowing we have two planners, this may take time. And I appreciate everything you're saying. Having seen where we had success on this before, I feel like the staff analysis is a critical component. And so I know I'm asking for something that

is delaying this i just but i feel strongly it's something we need because i respect the work of staff and and what they've done on this so like absented i'm not comfortable i i appreciate sure i i get that there's not enough staff to go around we're shorthanded but that also means that there's payroll we're not paying right now can't we use some of that payroll to hire some outside person to to dress this thing up we have a contract plan or somewhere don't we

These are broader questions far beyond the Planning Commission. So at this point, the best answer I can give you is no.

So if you can bring these back piecemeal, I think some of them are pretty straightforward, like which ones go to Planning Commission, which ones go to an administrative permit kind of thing, or the fee out the last 5% is pretty straightforward to bring back to us. We could bring those back sooner rather than the other parts later.

I would say my best guess is sometime in the fall. You'd see this. Yeah.

Do you feel at this point? OK, so it seems like we're getting to a place where we're recommending staff as time allows to come back with. A full analysis or as reasonably possible with staff's recommendation that we would debate at a future meeting that may be piecemeal. We've indicated the two that we would like first. That.

We're all, yes? I would agree that those two would be the simplest for staff to write up. Okay.

Well, I think we can make a motion on that. Would someone like to make that into a motion? I'll do my best.

Do we really need a motion? Do we need a motion? Do we need a motion?

You do not need a motion for this. Could we just a roll call vote on what I just said then?

Yes, or a straw poll. That's fine too. Yeah, we need a straw poll.

There's five of us, so I don't think we can. Okay, a straw poll. Who is good with what I just said in terms of next steps? All right, that's five. Okay, hey. We did it. That's all right. Okay.

How sinister of you.

I realize that was contentious, and again, I want to thank you both for putting in the time on this. having debate on this and I do think this is what the process can look like of having these discussions and I appreciate the work you did on it. Thank you. All right, so we have, I've closed the agenda doc. It's been so long since I was in there.

We have nothing to report.

So the other subcommittee has nothing to report, which then takes us to the report of one Rob Eastwood.

I'll make this as pithy as I can. As mentioned, we're recruiting for two planner positions. We have interviews tomorrow, so I hope you give us our best blessings on filling those positions. Just two reports from our last council meeting. Last week, the council did adopt Campbell's first ever climate action and adaptation plan. So that was a two-year process, and the city does now have a climate plan. And more pertinent to the Planning Commission, the Council adopted an interim ordinance related to SB 9-450 and objective standards, notably to do some changes to soften the subdivision requirements under SB 9. And also to soften the objective standards in two neighborhoods of the city where there's objective design standards at San Tomas and Campbell Village. Under the council vote last week, those design standards will only apply to new residences, but not additions or remodels of existing residences. And those changes went into effect immediately last week. Under that, I do think we do have a business item coming to you for your next meeting, so you will be likely back in here in two weeks, and that's all I have.

New commissioner?

I knew I was going to be asked that question. To the best of my knowledge, the next council meeting, the clerk is working to schedule those interviews for that commission seat to get filled.

Okay, so you re-interview. You're re-interviewing.

There was no acceptable... I believe they are interviewing.

And this is for Corey's seat. This is for the vacant seat. And what about mine?

I was going to, to the best of my knowledge, I believe they can't...

The end of my term is technically August, is why I'm asking. Okay.

I've heard from the clerk they intend to at the next council meeting to make a designation of your position to keep it as is at least for the next month or two.

Okay, so they can post it.

Can we recommend purple to it? Are you planning on not re-upping?

No, this was supposed to have been posted. already and it needs to be posted for 60 days but it was not posted and so it's just simply i think we're just making sure we do all the right things so that's why i'm asking i like doing this so great with all of that said it is 9 54 pm i hereby adjourn this meeting the planning commission to our next meeting which is two weeks from tonight on april april august 25th have a good night