City Council - Special Meeting

We're ready to start. When Brandon gets here, we're ready. Okay, they're ready downstairs.

Thank you. Good afternoon. It is Monday, June 1st, 2026. We're at Carmel-by-the-Sea City Hall, and I'd like to call this special meeting of the Carmel-by-the-Sea City Council to order at 3.17 p.m. City Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Council Member Barron?

Here.

Council Member Booter?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Doves?

Here.

Council Member Jamal? Here. Mayor Byrne?

Here.

All are present.

Thank you. Nova, could you please read the public comment instructions for a special meeting?

During special city council meetings, public comments are permitted on items listed on the agenda. After each item on the agenda is introduced, the mayor will invite public comment on that item. Each speaker has three minutes to speak unless otherwise adjusted by the mayor. While stating your name is optional, it helps to identify speakers in the meeting minutes. Remote or in-person participants who do not comply with the requirements of the Brown Act will be muted.

Thank you. Tonight we're gonna start off with one extraordinary business item. It's an informational report, City Vacancies Pursuant to Government Code Section 3502.3 AB 2561. And I believe our Assistant Acting City Administrator is going to be covering this item.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. This presentation is in compliance with Assembly Bill 2561. and it requires public agencies to disclose the status of vacancies recruitment and retention efforts before the budget adoption. The original intent of the Assembly Bill 2561 is to address widespread vacancies in local government address the impact of vacancies in staff workloads, and also ensure that public agencies are appropriately staffed and labor relations are not undermined. There are additional requirements if vacancy rates is above 20%, which is not the case with us. General workforce information, we have 85 budgeted positions, 65 of those are represented, 20 are at will. This is the vacancy information by bargaining unit. The numbers have changed since the presentation was prepared. At will is one vacancy, was a project manager, which is in the works now. And now, of course, as you know, we have the public works director. General unit has three vacancies. The management unit has no vacancies. And the police officers association has one vacancy. Most of these are pending department needs assessment reviews. Not included here are the two parking officers that are also in the works right now, pending final offers of employment. So the total average vacancy rate is below 5%. On the recruitment and retention data for the last 12 months, we've had 11 new hires. Again, this doesn't include the CSOs, which are currently pending. The average hire time is four months, and this is from the point of opening the recruitment to the starting date of a new employee. And if it seems high, it probably is because last year, 50% of our recruitments were in the police department. And the police department recruitments require more extensive background. So it tends to skew the average date of hire. Otherwise, it is usually about two months to two and a half. On the retention data, we had five retirements last year or this fiscal year, four resignations. All of these were due to promotional opportunities. And the average service year of our current employees is 7.1 years of service. On the city's recruitment and retention efforts, we continue to work closely with department's directors to refine the recruitment postings so that we attract the candidates that are more closely aligned with department needs, faster application reviews, quicker interview scheduling, and quicker conditional offer timelines. something that's helped our retention efforts is that the city's salary and benefit are well aligned with surrounding agencies. And this has allowed us to remain competitive and reduce turnover. And something I'd like to share as a testament to our competitiveness is the fact that we've attracted candidates from out of state and continue to receive a high volume of applications on our recruitments. For example, in 2025, we had candidates that relocated to our area from Oregon, Washington, San Jose, and Southern California. So in conclusion, as a result of our efforts, the city has reduced its overall vacancy rate from 9.1%, which is what we reported last year, to 4.7% this year. And we will continue to evaluate our recruitment and retention efforts to continue to maintain a high quality workforce.

Thank you. Thank you, good job. Any questions from the council?

Thank you, Marisa, for the presentation. Just a quick question. So we have 22 police positions total. And I was just wondering if you or the chief could answer what the one vacancy is that we have. It's one police officer position that's vacant. OK. And is that in the works as far as being recruited?

Not currently. I think we've prioritized parking enforcement and the commander's position and two police officers we hired last year. So this one we kind of pushed off a little bit until the department conducted an assessment to see if they really, really needed it.

Okay. But we are okay as far as staffing with the number of officers that we have right now. Okay. Thank you.

Anyone else? All right. Go out to the public for a comment. Anybody like to comment on this? All right, we'll bring it back. Anybody want to have a discussion? No? Nothing? All right. What would you like us to do? Report out only. Love those. All right. We're going to now move on to the consent agenda. These are items that are routine in nature and do not require discussion or independent action. Nova, could you put them up? I'm gonna read through them very quickly. Number one is approval of city council minute meetings of April 6th and 7th and May 4th, 5th and 12th, April 2026 monthly reports, April 2026 check register summary. Number four is $1,000 discretionary grant award to the Carmel Youth Center. Number five is resolution 2026030, 911 emergency communication services renewal with County of Monterey. Number six is resolution 2026031, amendments to the fiscal year 2025-2026 adopted budget. Seven is Resolution 2026032, Appointments to Building Code of Board of Appeals, Harrison Memorial Library Board of Trustees, Historic Resources Board, Forest and Beach Commission, and Planning Commission. Letter authorizing the County of Monterey to continue the used oil payment program on behalf of the city for fiscal year 2026. 27 closes it out with number eight. Would any council member or member of the public like to pull an item for separate consideration? Just wait. You first.

Yes. Item number seven, please.

All right. From the public.

Number two.

Number two. I'd like to pull six. Number six. Jeff, Bob. Okay. So we've got number two, six, and seven pulled. So that leaves one, three, four, five. And eight, anyone like to make a motion? I'll do that. I'll make that motion. All right. Any second? Second. All right. Roll call, please.

Council Member Barron?

Yes.

Council Member Booter?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Delves?

Yes.

Council Member Drammel? Yes. Mayor Byrne?

Yes.

Motion carries.

Okay. We'll go to number two, April, 2026 monthly reports. Was that Karen? You want to come up?

Good afternoon, Karen Ferlito, interested citizen. For four years, I watched the monthly reports come through on the short-term rentals. and I continue to see them come through, and they say resolved or they say pending or whatever. But we are still experiencing a tremendous amount of short-term rentals in this town, and I don't think it is fair to our hotels, and it's certainly not fair to the residents that are in one of those neighborhoods. What I would ask is that the city have an audit of all the companies like Carmel Realty, Sanctuary, Haute Sanctuary, all of the rental agencies in town that purport to be doing 30-day or more rentals. And I think, for the most part, they are. But when you also see things like 30-day rental but call for last minute That's sort of suspect. And when you see certain maintenance trucks going all over town to places that are not supposed to be short-term rentals, maybe they've hired them to do property management, but maybe not. But I think it's time to really look into this do an audit of all these companies, see who's following the rules and who isn't following the rules, because I think our hotels are following the rules, and that's where we really want our visitors to stay, unless they're staying for 30 days or more. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Brandon, you got that? Okay, good. Okay, so number two, anybody else have a comment on number two? All right, now we're going to move to... I have a question. Go ahead.

I have a comment on what you just said right at the end, that they're not staying more than 30 days. I thought the law was you can't rent it for less than 30 days. Which is it? It is that.

Okay, well, we're not going to discuss that here. I think that's something we maybe can handle later. Okay, good. Thank you. Jeff, go ahead.

Okay, so I have a question. What's the law?

the law with respect to short-term rentals. Anna, maybe you can speak a little bit more to it. I think she's over there looking it up right now. But my recollection is you're not allowed to have a... Oh, careful. Have a rental of shorter than 30 days and a 30-day period.

That is correct.

So the law is not once a month. The law is 30 days. It's the 30-day number. That's right. Okay, so I can start on May the 15th, and if I rent my house out starting on May the 15th, I have to go... all the way up to June 14th. May the 15th to May the 22nd is not good, but May the 15th to June 14th is good.

You just can't have another contract in that period. You can't force someone to stay in a house for 30 days, but you can't have another contract within that 30-day period.

The contract would have to be for 30 days, but you don't have to stay there.

The contract has to be for 30 days, but the person, so if I want to rent my house out for car week, let's say, can I rent my house out for April, August the 4th through 11th, or do I have to rent it out for August the 4th through September 3rd?

So your contract would be August 4th through September 3rd. If someone only stayed there for those days, we can't do anything about that.

Okay. So to Karen's question, is the city aware of... Lots and lots, my words, lots and lots of short-term rentals.

We are not aware of lots and lots of short-term rentals. And we, let me, if I could, we do actively enforce, as you see in the report, we have our software. We do get calls from people as well. And so we are doing it, but I believe we're aware of most of the ones that are out there. Now we are, I think it's a great, a great suggestion to do an audit. Have we done a proactive audit of these vacation rental companies? No, we have not done that. So that might be something to look at. But certainly any time we get a complaint about a short-term rental, we'll go and check it out. Okay. Thank you.

All right. Moving on to number six. Is that yours, Hans?

That was yours.

Okay. Go ahead.

Just to clarify a question. Which item are you commenting on? The one that was just talked about. Number two.

It's up to you, Mayor, if you want to open up.

Go ahead. You can comment on number two.

The only thing I would say, short-term rentals, as we all know, are banned in the residential zone. There are about 50 or 60 that are permitted by the city in the commercial zone. So those are the ones that are technically legal. And those are the ones I spoke to previously that they're grandfathered based on an old, old exception that was in the city code at the time. All right. Thank you, Mark.

All right, moving on to number six.

I'm going to add one more. Karen really kicked over a hornet's nest. But one thing that I've mentioned a couple times in looking at these reports in meetings is it turns out that, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but my recollection is that we essentially give the operator of the short-term rental, the illegal short-term rental, two strikes before we actually implement a fine.

That's right. That's consistent with all of our code enforcement. The reason we call it actually code compliance, the reason we call it code compliance is because our desire is to bring people into compliance with the code. So we let them know. We give them a benefit of doubt. Hey, you may not know you're breaking the law, essentially. Please bring it into compliance. We don't see any action. We give them a second benefit of the doubt. Maybe they didn't hear it. Maybe they didn't take it seriously. The second one is, hey, we're serious. Comply with the law. And then after that, we start imposing fines. That's correct. We don't go straight to fines right out of the gate. Right. All right, now number six.

Now number six. First of all, I wanted to give the city, our finance director, some credit because she has been working on increasing interest income on our cash reserves, which are actually pretty substantial. And she, I believe, increased that from 300 something thousand dollars and added another $444,000, $445,000 on top of that. So more than doubled it. So I just wanted to give her and the city some credit for that. And then I had a quick question. The $305,000 overage on fire, Some of these were vehicle maintenance costs and overtime for the ambulance. Given the new vehicles and given the new ambulance arrangement with Monterey, is it fair to say that that $305,000 is unlikely to occur? I would be very surprised to see that next year, yes. Okay.

All right, moving on to number seven. Alessandra, I think you had a question.

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to make a comment. Just in general and overall, as we have so many new members of our boards and commissions recently over the past year and a half, it is even more imperative that we have proper training for the new members, especially as the majority now on many boards and commissions are new members. At one point, this was on our council's priorities list, and I wanted to ask if we actually have a training manual for each department. I would like us as a council to review what the current training policies are and the procedures. It needs to be much more than just explaining the Brown Act. There needs to be a fundamental understanding of what their role is as a board member or commissioner and a familiarity with our history, our general plan, our municipal code, and our ordinances, and it should come from the department head whose role is to oversee and be present at the meetings. I know this sounds like it is asking a lot, but there will be fewer appeals to the City Council if the members on the boards and commissions had a better understanding and knowledge of their positions and the weight that they carry.

Well said. I would second that if we were voting. I think it's a good idea. I have a question.

Well, I'll wait until after public comment.

All right. Anybody else?

Are you going to ask public comment?

Anybody else here want to say anything before I go out to the public? I'll wait until after. Okay, good. Public comments on item number seven, which is the appointments to the boards and trusts. Seeing none. Oh, we have one. We have some light people popping up tonight.

Maria Bruce, a commissioner, a member of one of the commissions and also as a citizen, I appreciate your comment tremendously because I think it's imperative that we are clear on the rules and regulations and what apply to the different commissions and I feel Personally, very, what's the word, almost contradicted or almost like surprised by the way my last commission was addressed. I happened to be out of town and I was sick that day. But I feel that a very transparent way in which we manage our government is very imperative. I also think that if we can advise commissioners of what the rules are and how they serve the citizens and the city is imperative because I believe in my last Circumstances, I felt that I did not have enough information at hand to make a decision when I was called to make a decision in a very rushed manner. And in certain ways, I wish I could have retracted my decision. But I know that's not appropriate. But I think it's an absolute requirement It's not Brown Act only. It's a lot more than what is a role? What is it what we can do? What is it what we're trying to do as five members of the community to serve our community? And I really implore you to address this issue as soon as possible, especially since you're putting new members into positions that they need to have what their role is. Thank you. I was not intended to talk today, but you pulled me in.

Appreciate your comment, Maria.

Good afternoon, Mayor Byrne and council members and staff. Yeah, I wholeheartedly endorse council member grandma's recommendation and included in that should be something of a workshop, if you will, about how to use the general plan and the municipal code in the decision-making process. all council members, board members, and commission members ought to be arriving at their own conclusions about the decisions that they face based upon their own research. And so having a little primer about how to research those foundational documents, I think would serve this municipality very well.

Thank you. Thank you, Ian. Anyone else in the public?

We have a hand raised on Zoom.

Okay.

Lee on Zoom, go ahead.

Hi, it's Lee Morkus at The Hog. I have attended a few commission meetings in our city, and I agree with everything that's been said. We don't put employees to work without rigorous training and ensuring that they have at least at a very minimum basic comprehension of their job, their roles, their duties, their obligations, their responsibilities, their policies, et cetera. there's only upside for our community and everybody that is served within our community by, frankly, servants that are serving our community for free when they have a more complete and detailed understanding. So as a guy on the business side of this, the more sooner, the more better, the more faster, the more better for all of us. Thank you.

Thank you, Lee. And I think we took good notes on that subject, right? And we're gonna, we're not saying what we're currently doing, but we're going, oh, we're gonna bring it back. But thank you to the public for making the comments. Jeff, let's bring it back here now.

Yeah, so this item appeared on a council agenda about two years ago, and I'm sure Brian remembers, because it showed up on our agenda, I think it was like at the end of, what are we in now, 2026? So it must have been sort of in the middle of 2024. And it showed up on the agenda, and then it was pulled from the agenda with no explanation. It was just pulled. And there was a lot of preparation that was done. So do you remember? I'm sure you remember that. Do you still have that document? Yes, I do.

I know one of the things we talked about was making some changes to the policy manuals and also considering the use of the Rosenberg rules rather than the Robert's Rules of Order, which are very clunky.

And I remember it very clearly. And yes, I understand. So could you, perhaps you could send it out to the five of us so that we're all familiar with what was in that document from a couple of years ago. And maybe you could extract a little bit of feedback from the five of us and then you could bring it back. I'll look at the two of you. Maybe we could sort of go through that process and then maybe in a couple of months we could see it. Sounds like that's a request for a future agenda item. I figure we'll bring it up tomorrow in that section. Okay, well, in the meantime, so thank you for that. Yeah, great. Could you just send that document to the five of us? I can do that. Okay. And I will do that. And maybe, okay, thanks. We'll discuss it tomorrow.

Go ahead, Hans.

I would just suggest for priority hygiene that we... remove something else from the priority list. If we're going to add something else, I completely agree that this is a very important item, but I'm also mindful that our list is honestly way too long as it is. So, and finishing the priority list would be a good start on that.

Okay. All right. You'll have your chance with Brandon. All right, Bob, did you have something?

Um, I'll just weigh in just, you know, thank you, um, Alessandra for bringing it, bringing it up. Um, Six years ago when I was appointed to the Planning Commission, I read about it in the pine cone. Actually, my wife read about it in the pine cone. I was not even called to let me know. And I know that doesn't happen now. Just trying to know Dale makes the calls to everyone. And then I really was just thrown into the deep end and absolutely no training in a very important job. And while that, I think, has been better on the Planning Commission at times. I think it's still happening on all our commissions. And I think what happened recently with the Community Activities Commission was very unfortunate, just because there wasn't clarity ahead of time. We were not behaving like a well-organized, predictable organization. And to the contrary, I think we allowed a new committee to make progress and make some decisions that, in hindsight, with the proper training, might have gone differently. So I'll just leave it at that. But I think it is a priority. And I look forward to it. We seem to have a lot of appeals. And I think a lot of them could just be avoided with better training on the boards and commissions. And I know three of us were on various commissions at one time. So I think we've all had our own experiences. Thanks.

Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, so we need a motion to approve items number two, six, and seven.

I move to approve consent agenda items two, six, and seven.

I'll second that.

Roll call, please.

Council Member Barron?

Yes.

Council Member Booter? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Doves? Yes. Council Member Jamal? Yes. Mayor Byrne? Yes. Motion carries.

Congratulations to all the appointees, and now they've been appointed. All right, now we're gonna move on to orders of business. Item number nine on our agenda tonight is parking management presentation and direction. It's a presentation regarding parking management through paid parking, followed by direction to staff.

Chief Traer. Well, good afternoon. I think it's still afternoon. Council and Mayor Byrne. I would make a joke and say this is gonna be quick, but it might take a second. for Parking Management Program. Today I'm gonna give you some options that you've asked for, it being a priority of yours. My goal today is to explore managed parking options, review updated technologies, what I have found, and discuss potential impacts and benefits for our community. And then I would like to just receive direction from you on a managed parking program. Just a quick recap for someone who might not know, if anybody here doesn't. We have a traditional free parking model right now. There has been a growth in visitation over the last few decades. Our community and visitors complain about parking and have so. And there have been multiple studies and surveys done since the 1950s. I think I've read most of them. And I appreciate the amount of outreach that's been done over the past few years related to managed parking. I'm gonna give you a couple different options tonight. And the first is a high demand area in our core business zone, which is fifth to eighth Junipero down in Monteverde. We currently have a residential parking program at all those locations, scenic, some of the neighborhoods that help control some of the parking for residents. There's a tremendous impact from employees who are parking downtown, and the community often sees parking as a barrier to even come to Carmel at times. There's a tremendous amount of vehicular circulation, vehicle circulation and congestion. The technology has improved since the last studies, and now managed parking is more mainstream in our area. The current system works during these kind of non-peak areas, which I'll talk about in a second. I forgot one thing on here, but I will tell you that a managed parking program could improve parking turnover, parking for residents, visitors' experience when they come to town, more compliance and efficiency. It'll increase our CSO's ability to do other work in our community, and it potentially has a financial sustainable benefit But the one thing I didn't put up there, which is super important to me, of course, is safety. It could potentially make it safer with people circling less in our community. My approach is a resident's first approach, and these options that I'm gonna show you tonight are just that for you to determine what's a reasonable time if we did a managed parking program for our residents downtown, for our community when they come to visit. The goal is to talk a little bit today about pay stations, which I have seen come up over and over again. One study that was done recommended we have, years ago, 140 pay stations. And that is not reasonable for Carmel. I've been here long enough to know that. But now with the new technology, you don't have to have that anymore. A system needs to be usable by people that come to visit. It needs to be intuitive. The pedestrian safety and driving concerns I talked about already, but that's important. And then considering what a maximum parking would be for people who are visiting versus residents who live here, as well as the financial impacts and costs. The new technology, it's not brand new, but some of the options for us are, which are a mobile pay option. You can have an app in your phone. Many of us have that. Or you don't have to, though. You can text, and everything can be done by text on your cell phone. You can call in a number and run everything through a system. It isn't a person, but it's actually probably AI, but it's a system that does that now. You can have remote time extensions if you are running out of time and you still have available time to be able to pay for, and you can still have the pay stations in town. We're required by law to have a way for people to pay for parking outside of a cell phone. It's the law. There are some cities that don't have that. requirement. There are three, like San Francisco and a couple other big towns, big cities, but right now we currently would have to have at least one way for somebody to pay outside of a mobile phone, which would mean at least one kiosk, one pay station. And then there's also options now for validation. So a restaurant could say if you go in to visit a restaurant, you could go in and they could validate your time for the paid parking. The pay stations now are solar, which is The license plate recognition technology that I'm putting on the scooters right now, the parking scooters, are compliant with this type of managed program. And it also gives us a chance to start collecting analytical data on where people are parking more throughout the year. And again, there needs to be a residential preference, I believe. When I talk about residents, who many of them have spoken to me already, they're behind me, Right now, residents get two free hours of parking downtown. And if they buy the parking, the residential permit, for $35, they can stay for three hours. That's still an option. But some of the things to consider are whether a resident can have three to five hours of paid parking, of free parking, excuse me, for that $35 fee, or whether they just get free parking, which is also another option. Most people that I've spoken to that live here They told me they don't park for five hours downtown. It's a special day when they do that, like when people are visiting. I can't speak for everybody, but that seems to be the sentiment that I'm hearing from the community. All of the studies I've read talk about employee parking, and it really, for those of you who have been here a lot longer than me, it would often push the issue one way or another. A managed parking program would effectively often make employees park outside the core zone. And that means likely in the Sunset Center parking lots, the Vista Lobos parking lots, if they remain free or any free area, which is likely gonna be a residential spot. Versus what I'm hearing from the community is that many people, the tourists will park in front of your house and they would prefer for the employees to park there. That's very subjective. That's just what I'm hearing from the community. But this would also, in the core area, produce a turnover for those downtown local spots, which could mean more revenue for the businesses. These managed parking businesses take about 60 to 90 days to implement a full program. It was pretty expensive before. Now it is relatively cheap. I'm not going to say free because you have to put in pay stations, but the parking programs themselves are usually covered by the parking entity, by the parent company. They're widely used throughout our Northern California region. The installation of signage and things like that are all usually done by the companies in a way that's designed with us, with the city. I talked a little bit about pay stations and where they'd be installed. I don't know exactly where they would be installed today, but that would be something we could look at if you choose to go forward with a managed parking program. Those pay stations now are pretty, they're slimmer. They can be decorated now with wraps. They can have facades built around them and the solar part can be moved above that facade so they still function. So they're trying to make them suit places like Carmel-by-the-Sea. Okay, what's it cost? So every time somebody parks in a parking spot and they use a paid managed parking system, it's about 45 cents that goes to the company. It doesn't go to us. And that's a service fee that's added on to the person that parks their car there. So for one car with two transactions, times the first model I'll show you, it's a little wonky slide, 701 spots is what I'm proposing for one of the options, they would make about $315 a day. Just by existing. And then all of the other money would go toward what the city uses the money for. There are some monthly fees, there's some signage fees, and then of course there's the cost of the parking compliance officers. So initially for four kiosks, it's about $35,000 and then $5,000 a year annually to maintain the equipment. I did a couple different programs and this is, some were recommendations to me just to give an idea of what options we could have. The first is that little red box there. I could have made it bigger, I apologize, but there's 86 spots there. That's Junipero to San Carlos and Ocean to Seventh, I believe, if I'm reading that right. That's 86 spots, doesn't include the loading zone, 20-minute spots, any of the ADA spots. I just want to give you an idea what that, although this would be complicated, it just gives you an idea what that type of impact that has on the community. So if we did 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., also subjective to what you'd prefer, like a nine-hour day, you could see at $1.50 an hour, which is pretty low, and the 45-cent service fee, you can see how that works out to $754 a day at a 65% occupancy. So all of the studies say that we should go by a 65% occupancy in a town. I can tell you, you know better than me, that that's pretty low. When people are coming to town, when these companies are coming to town and talking to me, they can't find parking. And number two, they are saying we're in the high 80s regularly. And in the morning it's different, but during the day we all know it's no surprise that it's more than 65%. So I stayed conservative. I went with 65% occupancy on those 86 spots. It's about $271,000 minus those fees I told you about, minus what it would cost to have our parking enforcement team. So this is the one I originally worked on. 701 standard spots from was at 5th all the way to 8th, and then Heniporo down to Monteverde. And I walked the spots with two of my officers, and that's hard to do because we end up talking to so many people, but we went through every spot. It's pretty accurate, but on 8th, some of those little bubbles are wrong, and I didn't know how to fix them quickly. But there are 701 standard parking spots that are timed right now. That's not the 20-minute spots loading white or ADA spots. THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE WHEN IT COMES TO THE REVENUE. THE PARKING MANAGEMENT, AGAIN, WOULD BE A NINE-HOUR DAY AT $1.50 AN HOUR. THE USER PAYS A 45-CENT FEE. ANNUALLY, IT WOULD BE $2,214,000. I PUT A LITTLE GRAPH THERE ON THE RIGHT TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA OF DIFFERENT FEES. IN THIS AREA, IN THE PENINSULA, IT'S AROUND $2, SOMEWHERE BETWEEN $150. IT JUST DEPENDS ON WHERE AND HOW, AND SOMETIMES IT'S A LOT MORE IF IT'S WHATEVER PROPERTY. THEY JUST HAVE DIFFERENT FEES. I didn't want to leave out Del Mar. So Del Mar has 112 parking spots. I counted it twice, and we came up with like two different numbers, but we'll go with 112. I think that's what it is. It doesn't include, again, the 20 minutes, the loading zones. But just to give you an idea, if Del Mar was in play, which would be a whole other path to make that happen, it would be about $353,000 at $1.50 an hour. All the studies talk about having to go through the Forest and Beach Commission, and there's just a lot more. I'm sorry, Coastal Commission. It may be the Forest and Beach. They probably care too. It's a beach. Thank you. The Coastal Commission, but also how that money is used, right? But I have been speaking with some of them, and I do think there is an opportunity there. As far as the village guests, some of the hotels have spoken to me and they've mentioned options for hotels. Like there are a couple hotels in town that are within that zone, the 701 spaces, that have no parking. Their customers, their tenants park on the street. So there are some options available to them when it comes to like validated parking and things like that. I do want to mention parking turnover because I feel like it's important. That's new terminology for me, but that's when somebody parks in a spot and they pay for three hours, which I usually do because I don't always know what I'm doing when I'm somewhere. And then I come back 45 minutes later and I leave and someone takes that same spot and they pay for three hours. And that's parking turnover and that is an additional revenue for the city. is one one thing that happens and sometimes it can be 25% it's I don't know what it would be here because nobody studied it like that but it is it could be significant you know we're working on a whole new parking compliance plan and that involves citations right now our citations are $40 if you get a timed parking violation it's $40 and That is low compared to other towns. I think Monterey's standard parking citation is $48. That's their minimum. That's their low parking violation fine. But theirs go up. Like if you're near the aquarium, it costs more. So it's something I'm not asking to change today, but I know I think we're talking about fees maybe tomorrow, and that's something that we could also take a look at as well. There are people in the community who want to charge, they want that fee to be $500, and I'm not exaggerating. It's like there are some people just think that's how, you know, we can police our way out of that, but I think, I think, you know, right now maybe $48,000 might be all right. As far as the pay stations, again, I just talked about wrapping and there are some towns have been really creative about that, really making it an opportunity for artists to be involved in that process. I just bring that up as a community opportunity. Okay, citations to give you a few numbers. With the new system, it's going to be better, it's going to be easier for us to track citations. We have one person working citations who more than half of the time was working animal control, and they wrote 3,480 citations last year. That's a lot for one person, plus the animal control. The year before they had, in 2024, they had a second person that was here part of the time, and you can see how the revenue is up. So the amount of people, it does matter, but it also creates more flow in the community. And then in 2023, they pretty much had two CSOs working, and you can see again where the, how that can impact the flow with more citations, people moving their cars, hopefully. 12.50 is what goes to the county right now. That's how much we pay the county for every citation. So out of $40, we don't get all of the money. My question to you is, do you want to go forward with a managed parking program? Does that work for you and the community? Do you want to do something small or do you want to go with the 701 spots, which the 2023 proposal was over 1,000 spots. It was bigger. It was wider. So this is just based on everything I'm reading, all the spots that I'm putting from all these different surveys. Del Mar is an option, but it would be a different path. I don't know if that would, that would take a lot longer to implement that process. And the citation fees, we could talk about them of course today, but I think tomorrow that's gonna come up as well. And then the residential considerations, like if you do decide to go forward with this, What's fair for you? You live here. I am neutral to that. That 65% changes based on how long residents are in town because they can take up a spot and it doesn't cost money, potentially, the whole day. So that could be an option or it could be a five-hour option. It could be what you have now, a three-hour option or whatever works. If you say yes, I will work with... my team and come back to you with an appropriate vendor. I will just ask for a little bit of help in determining the hourly fee and then when do we start. Right now the signs say it starts at 8 a.m., but there's no parking enforcement until 10. So you could technically, people could pay for those hours, those extra hours, because the police are there. The police could be out doing enforcement. So it is viable for that to happen. And then I can come back to you in a little over a month and give you some options. And that would involve also seeking funding for the pay stations if we decide to go that route. There's been a tremendous outreach to me and it's been very positive from the community. I read and watched a lot and listened to a lot and I reached out to people I thought were pro or con this whole program. And I think there has been a paradigm shift in our community. I'm not saying it's perfect, but There have been people who were absolutely against it, and we talked about it, and I think you might have more opportunity today than you have in the past. But there, of course, are some people that are the opposite, and I respect that, too. That's why I brought them in, just so I could hear it, hear where they're coming from. Today, I'm just seeking your direction on where to go with the managed parking program.

And so, Mayor, if I could, I just want to help the Chief tie it up in a bow, because sometimes things are so important that they're worth saying twice, so forgive me, Chief, but just as a reminder, we're bringing this back, the question of if anyone asks why are we here with this, you know, this became a priority for the Council at one of our meetings, and we were asked to bring this back. The timing seemed appropriate based on other conversations we're having this year with the budget with regard to revenue, and also the whole conversation about visitor impacts to the downtown area in circulation and traffic. So that's why we're here today. Once again, like the Chief said, we are not looking for a final direction tonight, so hopefully nobody in the audience is concerned about that. We're not looking for determination on what it is. We're not approving anything tonight. We are, though, looking for some guidance about what council is interested in learning more about moving forward, the size of the program, the type of the program, and things like that. So that's really what we're looking, and that direction could be nothing. You could just say, you know, we don't want to deal with this right now. That would be fine direction, too. We'll take that direction, but that's really what we need tonight. And to the audience, we still might throw some parking enforcement out at 8 a.m., so Just be ready, just in case. It's not a guarantee. You might get surprised. But I felt that other than that, it was really important to let council and the community know that, again, we're not looking for final decisions tonight. We just want some guidance on where you might want to see this go. So thank you very much.

Thank you, and thank you for the hard work you put into this. Thank you. In a fairly short time frame, we appreciate that for sure. So questions from the council?

I have a couple questions. What is the license plate reader technology?

License plate reader technology on the scooters allow the scooters to drive around and scan your car that's parked in a time spot. It takes a picture of the valve stem on your wheel and So it knows where you parked, it marks the GPS and it keeps track of the license plate. And then in two hours, if you drive back around, it'll turn red on the screen. That's what we're working on right now. We've had it before, but it kind of, the technology wasn't being used here and it died out. So we're revitalizing it so we have more efficient parking enforcement versus chalking the tires, which you've probably seen, which isn't great for people.

What would the LPR technology be in the situation of paid parking? Exactly the same, but mobile device, driving around, looking for outlaws?

Outlaws, yeah. Yes, sir. I think that, but also... Let's say you vote for residents having free parking or three-hour parking. I can put your license plate in the LPR system and it just stays green. It doesn't mark you ever red if you're never in violation. So it takes away running a car in a system to see whose car it is. It just does it automatically. And then it keeps the data for 30 days.

I think if I could just, so the LPR system interfaces with the mobile parking system as well. So they talk to each other. Sure.

Yeah.

So did you consider using businesses as pay stations rather than just kiosks? So if I wanted to, if I'm over there at nine o'clock and nine o'clock in the morning and I can't figure any of this stuff out, I could just walk into Carmel drugstore and hand them my credit card and buy two hours of parking or something like that.

It's definitely an option. It's definitely an option that could be done on a, an iPad, if you will. Like it can be done that way.

So we would just have to sign up some businesses or have some, decals in the business windows or however it is that we facilitate that?

Yeah. Probably the signs would have to say, go into the pharmacy or the drugstore. Go into the drugstore for if you wish to pay in person. That is an option. OK. Those are all my questions.

Go ahead. Thank you, Chief. Mine is around sort of how do you identify a resident? So today, how do we do it today?

someone like yourself comes into the police department and they show proof of residency, which is usually their electric bill, their phone bill, and they prove that they actually live in town.

So it's not, it actually is the person, not the car. So I'm not bringing in a vehicle registration. I guess that could work if my vehicle is registered locally. Yes. But if I'm a second homeowner and that's not true, I could still come in with a utility bill and demonstrate residency that way. It's true, yes. And is that currently limited to one car, two cars per household? Is there a limit? Do we pay?

I think it's two cars, but I don't know for sure. I'd have to look for sure. But I believe it's two cars, but I'd have to look for you. I don't want to make it up. I know that these kiosks, now they have a scanning thing on them. So let's say you say a resident can park for three hours, but they don't have it registered with the police department because they don't want to. They can go up and scan their ID card, the back of it, that little code, and it will know that they're a resident. that they're using a resident's ID, and it will spit out, it'll say put your license plate in there, and it does, and it'll allow them to do that without having to work with the police department. So there is that option also.

Second question is why do we pay the county $12.50? That's a good question.

I think because there is a court aspect to citations, so you're paying, every city has to pay the county their fee.

Alessandra? Thank you, Mayor. Bob just took part of my question. That's all right. So just a follow-up for that county question. So if the cost of a citation went up, would that $1,250 remain constant, or would it increase percentage-wise regarding an increase in the actual fee?

I'd have to find out for you. I haven't jumped into this realm before, so I don't know 100%. I know that right now at $40, it's $1,250.

Okay. And then my other question is... So for example, if we're only charging $1.50 or even $3 per hour, it still seems that some business owners and even employees would be willing to pay such a small amount to continue to park downtown. And do you have a response to that?

Yeah, I think if we put a cap of five hours in a parking spot, like blanket cap on five hours, and I'm just using that as a subjective number, that that could change that behavior. It means the car has to move or it will get a citation, whoever you are, unless you say residents can park all day. The residents may be exempt from that. That's your choice. But you do have the ability, some of the residents in town have asked for four hours, three to four hours if they feel like that's fair. That's kind of the mindset of it. Initially, when I was putting this together back in February when I started doing it, I thought, well, maybe you could come to town and pay $25 more than we'd make if we did the hourly $1.50, but pay $25, you can have a spot the whole day. But then I started thinking about how that would impact the residents, and I don't think that's fair. I think you're right, if I'm reading you right, that people will pay that $25 because that's nothing to park here downtown, and it doesn't help the residents park downtown. It doesn't help the visitors park downtown. And we're doing a disservice, I think, to the community if we do that.

Well, and just to follow up, even if there is a four-hour or five-hour cap, that doesn't prevent them from going a street over and then parking the remaining four hours into the business day and still taking that space.

Right. But it does create flow because they have to move their car, so it'll hopefully open up the flow right there for one spot.

Thanks.

Hunt?

Yeah, Chief, thank you for putting this together. It's helpful. As a council, we made parking enforcement a priority. Can you just describe, for folks that are listening, some of the changes that you're planning to implement and the timeline?

Sure. The first thing is we are modernizing our parking scooters. They haven't been used for license plate recognition technology in years. And the technology is on the scooters, but they are outdated, number one. The systems are outdated. Even the wires have been messed up. They've deteriorated. They don't work anymore. So we're in the middle, thanks to the city administrator, we're in the middle of revamping those scooters to new equipment. So that'll work. And then the company that makes all of that happen. Because of Jamie, we hired a different company that's very responsive. They're not only coming out and fixing and assessing everything, but they're making sure that the people that we hire on are trained. They're coming out and training them how to use the system, which is super important. Because we lost Cindy Young. She retired this weekend. So we have to make sure people understand the system.

But the police officers are out there doing parking. They are. They're doing it today.

I can tell you. I may have written a ticket today. Second, we're hiring new people. We are in the middle of that. There is a lot of people, there are a lot of people applying for the job here, and we are finding the best. And one will probably start here very soon. I'm half looking over at Marissa, but it takes a while to get through the backgrounds of each person because they are going to be representatives of our community. I think those are the big things that are happening. The license plate technology, I think, is really important. It will allow an operator to do more checks, but also not be as physical. Most people, when they go through that job and they're using that stick, I've seen it for years. It can add up onto people's shoulders and things like that. So this is safer. They aren't getting out of the car as much for that type of thing. They aren't opening the door and doing that. So it should be safer for the community, safer for them, quicker as they drive around. They're not blocking traffic as much. Should be more effective.

And so this year we basically had like, what, half an FTE because Cindy was doing at least half of her time on animal control. So we kind of had half a person doing parking. What is the plan? Did you say it was two and a half FTEs?

Yes. Two and a half. Two and a half. And they'll all be trained on animal control. All three of them. And I have a good relationship with county animal control right now. So if something very significant happened with the county, although we're not in contract with them, we have that relationship with them to cover us until I get people trained up. So that's how we're filling that gap right now.

And then with the LPR, you can do all kinds of sort of anonymized analytics about how long does the average person park downtown and all these interesting things. But I'm sure there's probably privacy concerns, but are there ways to identify folks that seem to be parking for too long? Is that a use case or no?

Yeah, there are. We're able to tell who is a frequent violator. And that really bodes another question, is $40 enough if somebody keeps doing it? And you have options, and cities do that, where they say, OK, 40 for the first citation, or whatever the number is, and then it doubles, and then it triples. And that's significant. I mean, it starts to get into hundreds of dollars per citation, as long as Brian says it's legal. But that is what happens, and there is a methodology to that, and it is an option for us if we decide to go that route. We could do it right from the beginning, or we could work our way into that once things get stable as a normal managed program.

But I think it's important to note, though, that we can – so right now with the paper citations, the chalking, we still take license plate numbers. So we could – those go into an electronic system already. So we could do that now. So that's not a new thing. It's not like a new privacy issue, just so you know. Oh, that's helpful. Yeah.

And then question, last question for you, Brandon. The amount of the citations, is that something that comes to the council?

Is that something that's dealt with at the staff level? We treat it just like, that's why the chief mentioned the fee schedule next, tomorrow or next month, because that's something you would have to adopt. Fees and fines are decided by council. Great. Thank you.

So, The compliance and the paid parking obviously works together. Or maybe it's not obvious. Oh, no, I think you're right. If somebody doesn't pay or doesn't go to the kiosk or doesn't go to the app or the store, it turns out, which I didn't know they could do. It's an interesting idea. Then the LPR is going to see if they've been there two hours, they get a ticket. Right. So it's sort of another way of doing paid parking. They get a ticket. Is it true that you have to put a hard copy ticket on the windshield with compliance infraction?

We do that here. Yes. No, you don't have to. But we do that here. We do that in this town. I actually think the towns that don't do that have quite a few issues if they don't. If you get one in the mail two months from now, there's a lot more proof that has to be. Now, we have great equipment that's coming in. It is an option for us to do that. But I don't think it's, we're talking seconds to get out of with the new equipment. It'll be seconds for the operator to get out and put it on the windshield. Because it wasn't before Cindy had to stand there. She'd have to, it would take a minute. Yeah, it'd take a couple minutes. And I think also it sends a message that we're doing enforcement. We're doing compliance checks and Instead of people just driving around the corner like happens now, a guy with three sets of keys, they're going to know that there really is a program here and that there's a method behind the madness.

Okay, the other thing is too, sir, sorry, but the first time I got pulled over when I was 16 and a half, I remember the police officer told me, one of the reasons I'm pulling you over is so that everyone's driving by knows that we're paying attention. So the ticket on the window actually does send a message to everyone as well.

Okay, but with paid parking, that doesn't happen, obviously.

Well, you'll be out of compliance after, let's say, three hours, two hours, and it will hit on our LPR system, License Plate Reader system, and then you will get a hard copy ticket. You won't get cited without anybody, a human being, seeing it, which I think is safer here.

Okay, so if you're not enforcing until 10, although now you're saying you don't want to make that statement so our patrol officers can also, they're going to have LPRs too?

They don't have them, no. They can, but we don't have them yet. They're not, you could put LPRs on police cars, but I don't, for that two-hour time period, I don't know that it's worth it. I think that, I think it's important to talk about that the officers do enforcement 24-7. They can for parking violations and And from 8 to 10, if people complain, usually that's what it is. Like that car has been parked there all night and now it's 11 o'clock, then they have some options to be able to site that car. The police can still do it.

But if we're doing paid parking, you wouldn't go to the kiosk and pay at 8 o'clock because you'd have two hours that you get for free.

Right. Well, that's an option. That's what I'm asking to think about is if we start at 8 a.m., then yes, you do have to go to the kiosk where you do have to use the QR code or the text. You do have to pay.

So how are we going to find out how many kiosks we need to have?

I need to work harder once you tell me to go forward with this. I could see, if it's fair to say, four. I think and I'm talking very high traveled areas where the community and the businesses would be okay with it being off of ocean, like off of the main path somewhere. And then somehow making it look like Carmel, you know, something that people can digest and be okay with. I get, I read everything. Like I saw, you know, I get it. So I, I don't, I don't want to put a hundred of them up. I want to put down a minimum, but I also think like, I know my mom's watching this, but if my mom came to town, she'd want a kiosk. Like my mom wouldn't be using this, the QR code. She'd want to pay somebody or pay something. That's the way she, she rolls.

Yeah, we get asked a lot of time, how do I pay? It happens all the time. So when, lost my train of thought. When you're, we're just going to have enforcement to start with, or compliance.

Yes.

So there's a cost to that, clearly, two and a half FTEs. Yeah. And I always looked at, we took in a couple hundred thousand before, but we may be paying more than a couple hundred thousand in the actual labor costs. Have you done that calculation? Because it looks like no matter what, if we just go with compliance, we're going to be in the low hundreds of thousands. and you're two and a half times, how much is that going to cost us? With the equipment, maintenance, everything.

Very close. It's very close to that number.

So that really isn't a revenue producing in terms of our budget. That's just getting cars to move around and freeing up some spots.

That's with the 86 spots we're talking about, which is a very small, small... That would be a very complicated thing to do in our town because...

I'm talking at 700... 700, it would... No paid parking, just compliance. It's going to be a break-even situation for us. Is that what you're saying?

Yes, sir. Now I see what you're saying.

Yes. Okay, so it's not going to help our budget at all. It's just getting cars to move around and hopefully increase... Yeah. Well, it becomes a...

Excuse me, Chief, sorry. But it does become a cost-neutral situation. So you have two and a half employees working for essentially free.

Okay, versus paid parking, which is measurable revenue. Right. And at that point, the labor costs become... round-off error. If you're up to $2.5 million and you're spending $250,000, it's a real moneymaker for us. Do I have that right?

You do. I know this probably sounds ridiculous. I don't think of the money. I think of the flow, and I think of people not circling as much. I know the money is important. I'm not naive to that, but I also don't want people to get hit by cars or Most of the collisions we have downtown are related to parking. Got it. So this keeps the flow moving, which I think increases safety.

And we'll keep this meeting moving by going out to the public and getting some public comments. Ready for public comments. Get up.

My name is Fred Kern. Since I have three minutes, I'm going to talk really fast. All I kept hearing is about enforcement, all these things. There are systems out there now that you do nothing. It takes a picture of your license plate, and you can have a little sticker on the back that says, I'm a resident. Why should residents not only pay property tax, but pay for parking fees? So they can park as long as they want. The machine will take a picture of the license plate. It will send you a fee. You can't send parking tickets enforcement, but you can send a fee to the people. Most people who visit come in rental cars. Under the law, rental cars have to pay all tickets. You run through and don't pay your fee at a toll booth. The rental car company has to pay it, and then they charge it to your credit card. So you could make it a revenue source by just driving around. So if you drove around on a certain path, every hour you would know if someone had already been there. The computer does it for you. If it goes over an hour, it takes a picture, it goes in, sends it to them, they pay it. Secondly, You should increase the cost. The computer can do that. You've been there for two hours, you pay double. You're there three hours, you pay triple. That slows down what Alexandria was saying, these people that come in and, well, I'll just stay, or I'll move, or I'll do whatever. The computer will watch all of that. It can all be done automatically. And enforcement, everybody who's got the parking ticket, it doesn't make you happy. It kind of upsets you, gives you a bad taste in your mouth by coming to Carmel. We don't want that. And kiosks. We wouldn't need a single kiosk. We wouldn't need people having to go to the drugstore to get their special little thing. It starts at 8 o'clock in the morning. They drive their path. It takes pictures. The next hour, it comes around. You're still there. They send you a fee. It's not complicated. It's done in many cities all around the country. And if you want a real revenue source, I've been yelling about this for years, and I worked with Chief Calhoun on it last time. I said, why should people pay who are residents? We had the kiosks. That became an issue. But we should be doing parking garages, and we don't have to worry about it. We can have an open street. But you can use the computer to do it all for you. AI will handle it, and it's just taking a picture of the license plate. It's not taking a picture of people or cars or that the car was moved. It automatically registers and sends it to your house or wherever that car is registered, whether it's a rental car or it's your personal car. Thank you.

Thank you, Fred.

Good afternoon, Nancy Toomey here, speaking as a resident. I believe that it is essential to the success of this project and its implementation to compile a group of folks, residents and business folks, to really drill into the weeds of the details of what this could look like, what our levers are, what the cost-benefit models are across the choices that are in front of you. And I just, you know, we've got the success of the addresses team and potentially the AHA team that has really expedited, you know, good execution on behalf of the city that has a lot more buy-in because there are more people involved in touching it. Presenting, you know, spreadsheets with trade-offs out here, your decisions that could be made if that's appropriate in the tools in front of you. This does not have to take a long time if you've got participants that are willing to give at least an hour a week or two hours every two weeks, that type of thing. And of course would need the oversight of council representation and city staff. But I also believe that this is an essential part of the next steps in this. And by the way, I'm more positive on paid parking as a tool for in our kit bag than I have been historically, personally. So I'm all game for it. figuring out how this could happen successfully. And I just would like to see a lot more data and questions answered. I probably got another 50 questions that I would like to see asked and answered. And of course I could write them up and send them in to to the Chief, but I think there needs to be some interaction on all of this across the major constituents. And it's not to diminish the quantity of work that Todd has done up to now on this, but I think it needs a lot more details. But I would support you making the decision here tonight to move forward. on this so that we can then take those next steps. And I know that the chief also has this big monster called Car Week coming up that's gonna be fairly consuming to make sure that those plans are in order. So if we could get some more hands on deck for this project, I think that would be helpful for many reasons that I've cited here this evening. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Nancy, and thank you for your email.

Karen Perlito again. I am a proponent of paid parking in our town. What we have now is organized chaos. which is caused by all kinds of reasons. We don't have to discuss that. We just know it's there. I just got back from Europe recently. Europe has figured it all out. They do send you tickets to the mail. I got two from France in French that needed to be translated. But that all worked out fine, and it wasn't for parking. But they've also figured out that if you are staying in town speeding, you're wondering. If you're staying in a town and this happened to us, we were directed to a parking lot that was a paid parking lot and the man who rented the place to us came out and said, oh I'll show you the parking lot to park in. This parking lot I will give you this thing to put in your window and it's good for three hours. After 9 o'clock at night, you don't pay until, again, 8 in the morning. So people who are spending the night can use the parking during the night, but they have to move the car in the morning. I also experienced that same thing in Croatia. They've figured it out. But I want to talk about Del Mar because Del Mar, we've had this myth, I think, that the Coastal Commission will not allow us to have paid parking. Well, I looked up. There's about 100 beaches in California that have paid parking. It's related to if development is going to happen and remove paid parking from a beach area that they get tough on. If the paid parking is partially or mostly going to provide services to the people who are enjoying one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, such as improved restrooms, such as whatever, improved sidewalks to get there. It is perfectly justifiable. I went to the boardwalk for a birthday party for a child. It was $25 to park. It would also actually increase access because if someone wanted to come and pay for three hours only and then they left, there'd be spots left. Because we all know people park for the entire day down at the beach. And lastly, We have a wonderful group, Carmel Cares, that picks up all the time in that Del Mar lot, and they pick up a tremendous amount of cigarette butts, litter, diapers, you name it. That's a service that we are offering to people who use our beach. We want them to use our beach, but we could use a little help down there with some parking fees that would help make that a nicer experience. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Karen.

Good evening, Council. Tim Toomey here, Carmel resident. Haven't been to France lately, but would like to. Thank you. I'm going to echo a lot of what Nancy already said, but thank you, Chief, for bringing this discussion back to reimagine how managed parking could provide more efficiencies and a better experience for everyone. I saw that Walker study, I think it was three or four years ago, and I didn't realize it at the time, but they found that there's sufficient parking currently, but an imbalance between the off-street lots. So I feel this really needs to be explored with more analysis whether it's employee parking, increased enforcement, or paid parking, it's important to identify what models and tools would support the goals of improved turnover, increased parking, and the things that the Chief has been talking about. I support further research on a managed parking program. and recommend bringing stakeholders in from the business and residential community to help craft this in a timely manner within six months. Thank you for your consideration. And I would also recommend that when we do this, that we look at the 701 spots. That would be a good start. I don't think you're going to get the right enough data or the right information out of doing the smaller number. So I just pass it on. Thank you. Thank you, Tim.

How many more people want to make a comment so I can plan this? All right, so if you have your hand up now, I'm going to let you speak. If you don't have your hand up, I'm going to cut it off. One, two, three, four, five.

Okay, we've got five more speakers.

Is that correct? Six. Six. Six more speakers, and then we're going to bring it back for discussion. All right, go ahead.

Good afternoon, my name is Carrie Tice, and at this point, we all as a city, as a council, can't ignore a parking management program anymore. Obviously, besides a new revenue stream, which is a concern that the council has, It also helps manage our visitors and the people visiting our city, which is another issue the council has and our residents have. So it's gonna improve parking turnover, it's gonna reduce congestion, and it will actually allow the visitor to spend more money. After two hours, you can't park Excuse me, you can't shop, dine, and wine taste in two hours. Allow the visitor who wants to actually spend money in our city that option. Because once they get in the car after two hours, they leave. They don't really stay. Secondly, we have a terrible reputation of having a parking problem. So there's a lot of people that don't even come to Carmel because they don't want to deal with the parking. The technology, as Mr. Kern laid out, has improved dramatically. Residents, of course, will be able to park for free And also, it has dynamic pricing. We can decide that we can charge more on the weekends, on holidays, on events. We can even decide during Christmas when it's dead to have free parking. So these applications now have such tremendous dynamic pricing that that's all controllable. There's also gonna be fewer kiosks than when we looked at it before because of the app, the QR code, the texting, and obviously we need a few for ADA issues, but much, much fewer. Other visitor destinations such as Sedona, Nantucket, Aspen, they all have a parking management program, and they have found that it helps manage the visitor. Those are all things we want in this city. Please encourage the chief to continue with this research and get a parking management program going. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, Christy Ramers, business owner in Carmel. The revenue looks really great, the $2 million. But does it actually solve the problem of the employees parking in the streets? My worry, I see it all day. the restaurant employees parking on San Carlos Street, and they're very willing to pay the $40 ticket just to not have to move their car. So my worry is if you have a five-hour limit at $1.50 an hour, and now they're just getting a bargain. Then also, I'm very interested in if we are going to do paid parking, how would the validation work? Because I know it will limit my clients wanting to come and come to my store for a quick errand if they have to pay. And then I do agree with the two me's about doing a workshop and really hashing out more ideas. I really would like to try the compliance first and have the parking enforcement officers because we haven't actually seen what it would be like if we actually have adequate parking enforcement who are marking cars and ticketing after two hours. Thanks.

Thank you. Hello, Ian Martin here, and film buffs will know there's a great cool hand Luke joke in all of this. Anyway, as for Councilmember Barron, I think what he was getting at by having the parking things inside businesses, aesthetics count. And they should be guiding our policies wherever possible about the way things look. That has to do with that big gray utility cabinet at the head of Ocean Avenue. I hope that thing goes away sometime in the not too distant future. But yes, aesthetics count. You know, this also speaks to the issue of institutional memory. It's one of my concerns for this municipality that we are losing our institutional memory. There are many things that have been coming up lately where it's like, well, you know, 10, 20 years ago, here's what we did, right? We need to go back and look at what we did about 12 years ago with that parking program. And and see what lessons we learned from that. I remember that they had these kiosks set up and they were so hard to use. Honest to God, you had factory reps standing out there training people how to use these things, right? It was a disaster. And so yeah, and but I also love this idea of like making money off of visitors That's a great idea two million bucks. I mean, that's something that's definitely worth worth exploring And then the other thing you're gonna have as you as you intensify parking enforcement of the downtown it's gonna be the tube of toothpaste thing where you're going to have people squishing out into the residential areas and that's gonna be an impact for residents and So being ready for that and thinking about how you're going to deal with that is going to be very important. And then the other thing, too, it's like, how can we incentivize and encourage carpooling for people who are coming in to work here in Carmel-by-the-Sea? That's the other factor as well. So anyway, man, if you love Paul Newman, you've got to check out Cool Hand Luke. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor, council members, Kevin Roos. I'm here to express my support for the implementation of paid parking and the Del Mar parking lot. I would even throw in scenic road. Let you all debate that. To do this fairly, it has to be implemented along with a modified program for city resident stickers. These should only be issued to vehicles with current California license plates. I know from past experience, my own experience, that the police department has issued resident parking stickers to cars not registered here when we first came out and still had DC tags, and the police department issued me parking permits. And that was wrong. It should not have happened. I was supposed to register my car within 20 days, and I didn't. The DMV later fined me. And this is true even if the owner's principal residence is in another state. If you reside in Nevada or Colorado or DC or wherever, but your car is principally garaged in California, it must be registered in California. So it's important to be sensitive also to the hundreds of people who live downtown. I mean, I live up on 1st. There are days when parking goes all the way up to 1st. So people who live downtown face much different competition for parking than those of us who live near the boundaries. I'm not sure what the hourly limit should be, but resident stickers should confer free parking, hopefully with a bonus period. I understand there's been a lot of discussion about the aesthetics of parking kiosks. Some cities have undertaken public art projects that allow painting various utility infrastructure boxes. Since we have so many local artists, how about letting them compete for the right to paint a kiosk? Also, this is another reason to come to council meetings. I was just talking with somebody sitting next to me, not Maria, but said, well, why don't we just integrate the parking kiosks to the magazine stands where you pick up your copy of the Pinecone? I mean, these things are already there. Maybe it doesn't need to look that different or be that much bigger. Additionally, and I think this goes without saying, but the city also needs to increase parking capacity. We could even have monthly rates in a city-owned garage. Maybe that would address the idea of employees being willing to take the $40 parking ticket hit. Why not have a monthly rate for employees who use it every day? So I would encourage the city leadership to develop and implement approaches that leverage the existing city-owned parking lots for multi-level parking and say it, okay, that can be thoughtfully combined with other city goals and we all know what this is about. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Okay we're on number four I think.

Maria Roos, resident. I believe you can analyze something tremendously, and I can believe that I am truly surprised that this body has been analyzing this since 1999, and we still don't have a result. So in my opinion, I am in full support of what you have presented today from implemented and managed parking solution. I think it's important because you have most of the tools that you need. I believe that you should go forward with the commercial area of 701. That seems like a good size solution. I also think it's, we should not penalize our employees, the people that come to work, even the city though, our members of the community, those who work in the city and come to work here. So I would say we should apply an employee discount program that we can give that or we create some parking areas. So one thought that I had was, I've been in places where there's zones. So we can say, for example, the downtown area is zone one, and then there's a zone two, which has a different rate and encourages, for example, employees to park in zone two versus in zone one, and they're a little further out. So that will be a thought process, something to do. I also think that the technology is so advanced. I was just in Portland and I used something called Parking Kitty and it's very simple. There's a poll that has your number of your location and basically the way to pay and you just download the app and you pay it. How many kiosks you need? Two to four, I agree with you, is a very good solution. I also think that if you're thinking of something creative, in Washington, D.C., for example, they had painted things that looked like cows. We had elephants. They had different things that looked like your booths cannot have to look like a box, like a metal box. You can do something attractive, and you can have two to four, and like Kevin suggested, a competition. But I also think, and I hate to bring this last topic to term, but the Sunset Center is a parking area. So why don't we go forward with the original idea of looking at the Sunset Center parking lots and have an RFP for something that has two levels of parking, plus commercial and some kind of housing on top of it and use that land for a solution that will bring alternatives and solutions for our community in many ways. It will help us with the housing situation and it improves our parking and give us additional parking. So I would say let's reconsider the Sunset Center parking lots as a possibility of something that could be developed for a parking solution. And of course, I applaud the ability to get some revenue from this, because $2.5 million or $2.2 million is nothing to shine about, even though it's not your major concern. I think safety is valuable. But I think from our budget standpoint, Bob Delphs, you will be happy with that solution. Thank you. I appreciate your time.

I show this is number five, so there's one person more. I think I was six.

But maybe there's one more. No, there's one more. Okay. Mark Stilwell, owner of Stilwell Hotel and Tradewinds. Very, very supportive of this direction. Hopefully the city council adopts it. I mean, talk about low-hanging fruit. To me, this is a win-win-win for the residents, for the businesses, for our visitors here. It raises millions of dollars from an otherwise untapped source. It reduces parking congestion, which also helps with traffic safety. I didn't even realize that that was our number one cause of accidents. I think it's great for the residents. We provide them with customary free parking. I just, I don't see, and it's used all over the world. I mean, to Karen Forlito's point, I mean, I've used it in some of the most old world cities in Europe, and it works splendidly in a foreign language where I'm not that computer literate with my phone like my kids are. It just works like a charm. And I'm a part-time resident up in Truckee, and they have this exact program here, and it's $1.50 an hour. It's 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week. And traffic parking moves in that city. Peak times, it's always going to be a little busy. But even then, spots open up. People are happy to pay. They get their message. If they still have time allowed, you're running out. You've got two more hours. You want to buy it so you don't have to get up from your meal and go feed a meter. To me, it's just a splendid experience. way for the city to proceed. And they have about one kiosk per block in Truckee. And I've sent Brandon a couple of photos. And it's your traditional parking signs, which we have all over town. And there's like a five-foot little box on every block or so. And it's really not that obtrusive. But I'm sure there's ways to even make it less obtrusive. So I think you have a great win. I think the On behalf of the hotel industry, I think we're very, very supportive of it overall. Local businesses, I think, will benefit from the turnover. People who come park for two hours and just window shop or walk around don't really spend any money. So I strongly encourage you to pursue this, and I thank you, Chief, for a very good presentation and look forward to hearing the council's deliberations. Thank you. Thank you.

Pam Shepherd, Horizon Inn, Ocean View Lodge, Visit Carmel, you name it, I've been here, I've done it. I have been a part of every single one of those prior parking studies. I've done all the surveys, and I just wanna say that Chief Terrier, his attention to detail, his thoughtfulness, and this particular presentation has been outstanding. I fully support the 701 spaces because when you start talking about what it's gonna take to implement 86, you might as well do the 701. You can't ignore the revenue that it's gonna generate. It certainly is a fair representation of cost. I mean, it's gonna affect the resident, it's gonna affect the visitor, it's gonna affect the business district. Everybody pays into the system equally. or proportionately, depending on how the system's used. You can't ignore the technology. This is it. This is our time. It is a small footprint. It's flexible. We can set parameters. If we don't like them, we can change them. It doesn't take an act of God. It simply takes getting into the software and making a quick, immediate change. So there's just very little reason to ignore where we're at with parking. It certainly feels like the scope and the support that you're getting, this is the time the council could really make a big push and do something really good for the city of Carmel-by-the-Sea. So I appreciate your support and would like to see this go forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Pam. So I don't see any hands up online, so we're going to bring it back to the council for discussion. Jeff, you want to kick it off? Sure. I know you're interested in this subject for a long time.

I've been interested in this subject for a long time, and I have lots of words. First, I'd like to thank the chief for all the work that you and all the people that have come before you have done, and Dale and Bob and everybody for prioritizing this. I'll start with a little bit about me. What I believe, you know, there's a book that I've gotten a lot of my parking knowledge about, and it's... It's called The High Cost of Free Parking. It's the parking bible. It's by a guy who recently passed away, an economist that actually lives somewhere near here. And it's about 1,000 pages on the science behind parking. And the most important thing in that book is that parking is a supply-driven issue. It's not a demand-driven issue. It's like highways in Southern California. So when you build a new highway in Southern California, it relieves the congestion for a little bit, and then a couple years later, the congestion is back. So that's the situation. As you listen to my comments, my true belief is that if we build a parking lot, the parking lot will fill up. And we will simply have the same problem. We will be back here two or three years from now, and we will have exactly the same problem because we have allowed people to not internalize the cost of the service that we are providing to them, the cost being the cost of us maintaining the roads, the cost of us facilitating all these parking spots in town and all that stuff. So my comments are not geared towards building parking lots. The things that I like, I like that this idea, you know, more than any other idea of all the revenue ideas that we talk about, is targeted towards people who use the service. So this is a, if you have a car and you're going to use the parking space that the city of Carmel provides you, then we're going to charge you a fee. that that Nexus between usage and payment is Really important to me and I think it leads to the best outcomes when you try and design systems like this I also like the a couple of random things I like the Chiefs idea of the artistic component of pay stations and making them more like Carmel than the experiment that we had in 2014 where they were just sort of monolithic pay stations on on ocean I like Kevin Russo's idea of only giving parking permits to California license plates. I don't know whether that's legal. I don't know. I'd have to sort of rely on the chief and the attorney for what residential permits mean and how that will work, but I think that's a great idea. One thing I don't like, I'm sorry, Christy, is I don't like the idea of relying on enforcement only. I think that the problem with enforcement only is that the problem that I see downtown that I've always talked about with relation to paid parking is that we have a congestion problem. So we have the financial problem over here and a congestion problem over here. And I've always been interested in the congestion problem. And making, you know, raising, raising our enforcement efforts while it may bring in more money is, on the other side, is going to cause those people that pay the tickets or don't pay the tickets to move their cars more often. And a significant amount of the congestion downtown is caused by people moving their cars, which I'll talk about in a minute. It's caused by employees. Not all employees take the risk of parking all day and getting a $40 ticket. There are a lot of them, we have seen them, that are law-abiding employees that move their cars every two hours. And that is a significant cause of the congestion downtown. So as much as I think we would like the money, raising the level of congestion downtown is not a good outcome. Let's see. Going to paid parking, going to the sort of theory behind paid parking, You know, one of the ideas behind most paid parking schemes, you know, most paid parking schemes is that we, you know, I think Maria talked about this, having different levels of parking. So $2 in the middle and $1 on the outside or whatever that is. And I think that there's merit, there's a lot of merit to an idea like that. The way I've always thought about paid parking downtown is is to have the interior core of the downtown being paid and the exterior part of the downtown being free. So that would provide free spots if that's the direction that the council chooses to go. That would provide free spots to employees. Now, free spots to employees is sort of a different question. But we don't want to force employees, or we don't want to... We don't want to force employees necessarily out into the residential areas that are already besieged. And if we charge everybody $2 or $4 or $6 an hour for parking in the entire 1,000 spots, or maybe in these 800 spots, the 761 spots, the 701 spots that the chief has outlined, my worry is that we'll have a lot of empty spots downtown caused by the employees moving to the residential neighborhoods. And what is now a problem only on the weekends or only during busy times of the year will soon be a problem every weekend or every day as all the 1,000 people, however many people it is that work in downtown, avoid our downtown parking area and park in the residential areas that surround downtown. So there are ways to sort of restrict the residential areas, like three blocks surrounding downtown, permit parking, like we have these scattered permit parking areas sort of around town, like on Torres Street or on Monteverde Street over here, you know, on that street near Mountain View. But those are complicated systems, and I think that starts to complicate everything. If we decide to do a small pilot, this is a note I have to myself, that the chief provided, which is like one square block, you know, he put up a slide that's one square block at the top of ocean that runs sort of around the plaza, like around the plaza sort of area. I think that is a bad idea. I think that's very confusing. And I think that A better, you know, if we decide to do like a smaller pilot program, I think Ocean Avenue is the perfect pilot program. Like running, you know, a set of parking rules that's consistent all the way down Ocean, like consistency is the key here. And saying that these blocks are paid and those blocks are not paid or those blocks are free, I think that is the hallmark of a pilot program that's going to work. The next thing I would say is I think it's important, you know, to get the congestion part right, like I was talking about before, reducing the amount of congestion downtown. To get the congestion part right, it's important that we charge the right amount of money to manipulate the parking. And I hear, you know, I see, you know, that when the chief put up his slides and there were numbers that were $1, $1.50, or $2 an hour, I would ask us, you know, the council and staff to sort of disabuse yourself of any preconceived ideas about what the right amount of, what the right amount to charge for parking is. I think Carrie talked about dynamic parking, and I find, you know, I'm afraid that people that, I'm afraid that dynamic parking may be a little bit too confusing for people. You know, parking that changes every day. But the right amount of money to charge for parking on a busy Saturday might be $6 or $8 an hour, not $2 an hour. There's a balance to try and maximize the amount of money that the city obtains and the amount of congestion that we relieve. And I think that the right point is to figure out what that $6 or $8 an hour number is. So I think we need to not go into this plan. We can start. with $2 or $3 or $4 an hour. But I think in the end, we need to have a parking scheme that is sort of free of our preconceived ideas of what the right amount of money is. I talked about the paid parking not taking up all of the downtown area. One of the things I noticed from the chief's diagram was that the area on the south side, the area on the south side of Ocean, there's much more downtown. We think of there being a lot more downtown between Ocean and 8th than we do between Ocean and 6th or Ocean and 5th. And I'm not sure that that's necessarily the case. And what I would ask you when you come back to us with a plan is that you understand where the people that work in various parts of town are going to park. Like I would hate to have, like Christy spoke about employee parking and her business is on San Carlos between 7th and 8th. And I would hate to see her employees not have any place to park. So I would like to understand, you know, if those employees are going to park in the Sunset Center parking lot or where exactly they're going to park. without them being forced into the residential neighborhoods, which brings up the idea of dedicating the Sunset Center lot to employee parking if that's what we need to do and if that works out with the Sunset Center. I talked about dynamic parking. I would be open to parking fees that change a little bit if we decide not to do dynamic parking. So if weekends are more expensive than weekdays, for example, or if dinner time is more expensive, if it can be written on two lines of an index card, this is how much the parking costs. I think that simpler is better. But I do think there might need to be some sort of dynamic rate. There was a slide about unlimited residential parking. I'm not in favor of residents having unlimited parking access to downtown. I don't know what the right number is, whether it's two hours or three hours or four hours or five hours or whatever it is, but I think that there should be some limits. I don't think that I should be allowed to park my car downtown all day and just leave it there. Del Mar, I spoke about the impact on residential neighborhoods. I think the problem with paid parking in the Del Mar parking lot is that the people in the Del Mar parking lot are going to, by definition, go into the residential neighborhood. And if we start charging two or three or five or ten dollars an hour in the Del Mar parking lot, That's going to make, or on scenic by the same thing, that's going to push a lot of that parking up into the residences and up in the residential areas of town. And those areas are already besieged on busy weekends, like I've spoken about before, where I live on Camino Real, admittedly on the other side of Ocean. And I would hate to see a lot of empty spots on scenic and in the Del Mar parking lot and the residential areas be really crowded. I would hate for that to happen. Village guest program. Someone mentioned, and I'm sorry I didn't write down who it was. Someone mentioned a village guest program for the hotels. I would absolutely be in favor of something like that. Some of the hotels, like Carrie's Hotel, for example, has 30 parking spots, and some of the hotels have 10, and some of the hotels have zero. And I think that the hotels that have zero parking spots put a strain on the sort of parking supply in the city. And I think that, you know, as I've talked about managing revenues versus the people that use our service, I think if hotels don't have on-site parking, that there needs to be some fee for managing exactly how that works. And finally, two more things, sorry. One, Chief, when you come back, when you come back, I would be especially since this is where the 2014 program caught a lot of hiccups. I would especially be interested in seeing what the signs are, what the kiosks and especially the signs are going to be on Ocean. So what are you know, you talked about putting signs at the top. you know, putting signs at the top of the polls, hey, this is free, you know, before. But I would be interested in seeing what the aesthetics of those signs are, what information is going to be there, and sort of that would lead to a discussion of how sort of the whole system is going to work, I think, whether you have a QR code up there, however it is that people find the system. And finally, You know, if we're going to call this a pilot program, then I think it's really important to have some success criteria and to understand what it is. Like, I think it's easier to set out what a successful program would look like before we start in the program. before temperatures get inflamed or people don't like the way the kiosks look or whatever it is, and they find an excuse to not like the program. So let's find a way up front to decide how we're going to decide that the program is successful. And it could be the amount of money it raises. It could be a measure of the congestion. You know, there are lots of different success criteria for a program as complicated as this one. But I would be interested in understanding what those are. And part of that, the last thing I'll say, I promise, is that when you talk about, when you read through the high cost of free parking, one of the success criteria for parking management programs is often one empty parking spot per block. So you know that you have found the right dollar amount. Like in San Francisco, you know that you have found the right dollar amount if you don't have to drive more than one or two blocks to find a parking spot. And so that means if there are 10 parking spots on a street, you have a 90% utilization during the busy period. So that's an example for me. of a success criteria. And I would like to understand, you know, before we start the program, what the success criteria are, like how we will make the decision in six months that the program has been a success. So those are my comments.

Thank you. Well done. Could I ask you a question just to make sure I understood what you said?

Sure.

Do you think this needs to be a pilot program or can we just do it if we're going to do it? That's the first pilot comment I heard.

I don't, like the chief, I guess I used that verbiage because you talked about it, but I guess I thought, this could be me, that 700 to 701 spots was still a pilot program versus just a program. But I think to the mayor's point, even if it's not a pilot program, if we elect to install paid parking, I think we should do a performance, let's call it that. Let's call it a performance evaluation of the system according to some number of metrics that we have decided on beforehand. so that we don't get caught up in all the noise that will surely be happening six months from now. So let's decide before we go in how we're going to judge the program after six months. And I think that will better help us tune it, whether it's the dollar amount or the rates or the hours or whatever it is before we proceed.

I'll take your comment as a yes to do something.

Yeah.

OK, thank you. Bob, you want to go?

Yeah, starting with the end in mind, I support paid parking at a start, at least in the 700 spots that the chief has identified in the central business district. And I don't know that we're being asked tonight to design the system. In fact, I think we're really being asked to just let the chief design the system. So I'll give a few thoughts on what the system might look like, but really what I think should happen, and I think this is what the Toomeys both were saying, is probably the right path forward is actually for the chief to continue in his leadership role to actually convene a group, task force, whatever you want to call it. And I know that sounds bureaucratic and governmental, but we are bureaucratic and governmental. And that... Just to give it kind of more oxygen, and as Chief, I think what you've done is you've had a lot of bilateral conversations with a lot of people, but you haven't had a lot of conversations with 10 people in the room. So if you could convene a group, and I think you can just choose six people, and that's just a suggestion, representing... various interests in the community. I think we've discovered that sometimes having some level of sponsorship from the city council makes sense. And if you thought it was appropriate to include one of us in that group, you know, you choose. And that group is tasked with asking and answering about 20 questions. I think Jeff teed them up pretty well. And his point about essentially define what success looks like. I think if you ask and answer those 20 questions, that at least gives you a straw man of what a program would look like. And that, I think, will help you answer what success looks like. But then the second part of that process would be that that group hosts one to three just city hall type of group workshops just to come and sort of for the group to lay out here's what we think the parking plan should be and here's the 20 questions we've asked and here's the answers we have for those 20 questions and kind of put it out there and sort of say, all right, what do you think? and just get a lot more public oxygen on this, because this will take, I'm going to say it's going to take six months to do this, and you'll be coming back in January. It could be a very different city council at that point, but maybe that's okay. It's not ideal timing, but perhaps it's realistic timing. Just a few of my own comments. I think we decide to go or no go, and I don't think pilot should be a decision factor. I think you get through this process, you'll have that group, and I think you'll have buy-in from the community on go or don't go. And I think using pilot as an implementation technique is great. That, you know, we'll just... implement a few blocks and run it for a month to see how it works and kind of get it dialed in. But I wouldn't do it as like, well, we're only going to do this if the pilot works because that, a lot of times pilots don't work. That's the way, the reason you do a pilot, the reason you just did an evacuation drill wasn't that it'd be a massive success. You were trying to learn from the failures. And so I think this is the same example of that. I think Jeff's point about what are we trying to do, that this is driven by safety and it is to manage congestion is right. And I used to, one of the things I did in a prior life was design and operate call centers. And one of the things that you learn in that business is queuing theory, which basically you have an arrival rate of demand and a capacity to handle that demand. And as long as you have capacity to handle the demand, it all works. But as soon as your capacity to handle the demand isn't adequate, it just starts to back up. And it does so in an almost logarithmic curve. It just goes crazy. And that's what we see here on a busy weekend, is just our supply is finite. And if none of the cars are moving on a two to three hour basis, which I think they're just not adequately, we just don't have the capacity. So I think we have to manage this program in a way where we understand that and that increasing capacity there's not much we can do about the arrival rate. It just seems to keep coming. So I think that that's really what this is about. On Del Mar, I would like to see us do paid parking at Del Mar. I think that could be a phase two. I think we should start with the Central Business District. Originally I was tempted to say let's start with Del Mar, but I think it's kind of a different thing. It's its own animal down there and and the path through the Coastal Commission, it's just a different path and it's one we don't control. So I think to have that as a separate path that we might do later might make sense because it could end up taking two years for the Coastal Commission to give a simple answer. They like slow no's and even slower yes's. I love the idea of, you know, The beauty of this technology, and I think most of us have now seen it in other places, is just how light the technology is in terms of infrastructure. It really is a phone and some signs. And the kiosk is necessary But they don't have to be abundant. The idea of putting them in businesses, I think, is brilliant. And even if that business could even make a little bit of money for doing that, great. I mean, I think that could be a win-win. And I don't think we should let the kiosk thing be an impediment to us, because I think there's a lot of people. I think it's interesting that nobody stood up and opposed paid parking here today, which that alone is interesting. But even on the kiosk thing, I think there are a lot of people saying, you know, three, four, five might be above the right number. I'm sorry, I'm not supportive of only California tags, Kevin. I've got three neighbors on my street that live in different states and they come here for the summer and they drive in their Arizona car and They pay the same property taxes you and I do, and they're kind of even take advantage of fewer services. And I certainly think that all of our residents should be able to enjoy the same level of free parking, whatever that is. Dynamic pricing is absolutely, but again, not a decision anybody has to make right away. The beauty of this technology is you can change your mind. And you can change it in real time. And once you implement it, you can really play around with it until you, I've always said parking is a game of whack-a-mole. And if you don't have flexibility, you end up with a lot of unintended consequences that you can't fix. But with this technology and the flexibility it gives you, I think you can change some of the fundamental variables and see how that impacts things. I mean if we've got too much traffic being driven into the adjacent residential areas, perhaps there's some dynamic pricing up or down that can help with that. Yeah, I think we should do it and I think I would recommend the approach of creating a group to move forward. I'll leave it at that. All right. Alessandra?

Thank you, Mayor. I favor option four, which was in our staff materials, which was to take no further action right now. I feel very strongly that we need to allow the parking enforcement to be given a chance to be in full effect for a year, and then we can revisit the issue once we have the data and the facts. to analyze how it's functioning and if there's more that we need to do. We need to keep in mind that this is a divisive issue and there will be some public pushback. It's so fundamental a change to our community and it is intrusive and it will create visual clutter on our streets. As we know, paid parking was tried in 2014, as Ian mentioned, and the community dislike of it caused the meters to be removed quickly. And I know technology has advanced since then, but there still would be some signs and stations and kiosks on our streets, which can be a visual blight and cause visual clutter. Furthermore, when we had the 2024 sessions with the consultant former Chief Euler, those were contentious as well, as many residents felt that the paid parking was being forced upon them, and they were not happy with that. We do have a congestion issue downtown, and that does include delivery trucks, and we need to address that as well. But I feel that this whole issue needs to be separate from the whole idea of revenue and finding a revenue source. A decision to enact paid parking at this time feels premature, and it needs much more community buy-in and support. And here's where I am in favor of what we heard from the Toomeys and others of creating a community group with community outreach and meetings and workshops. And I would support that because then you will get better buy-in from the community as a whole and make it less divisive. But I do feel strongly, as I said, that we do need the parking enforcement to be given a good chance because it's really the first time I can think of in probably over 15 years or so that we've even had two full-time officers, parking enforcement officers, to be able to do their job. Furthermore, some revenue will still be generated, especially if we choose to increase the amount of the citations. As we heard, they're $40 now. We could easily make them $48.50, or if we did $52.50 minus the $12.50 that goes to the county, we would be getting the full $40. And certainly we can discuss that tomorrow when we have our budget discussion. Also another thing to keep in mind is nearby Paso Robles enacted a paid parking program recently in 2019, and both the business community and the residents opposed it. and it was actually eventually stopped. The businesses said that it hurt sales, and the council repealed the ordinance in 2024. As far as the Delmar area, I say absolutely it should be kept out of the discussion. It feels like a non-starter because of the need for the Coastal Commission involvement, and if I understand correctly, Brendan and I had a conversation about this not too long ago. One of the agreements that the city would have to agree to is to build some kind of a boardwalk in front of people's houses to allow pedestrian access from the Del Mar parking lot to the beach. And Brandon, please feel free to add to that to clarify.

Do you want me to speak about that now?

Sure, that's the end of my comments.

Yeah, so actually I have the benefit of having been involved in this when I was in the planning director's chair. I worked with Chief Tomasi. This was a project he and I worked on back then. And as we were starting this item, I was actually going back through my old emails from that time to see exactly what my friends at the Coastal Commission said. So we did start with asking the question, what would happen if we decided to create paid parking down at the Del Mar lot. And their immediate response was we would actually be taking away coastal access. So the Coastal Commission's charge is coastal access and preserving the coast. So they said if you're going to do that, then you're going to have to process a coastal development permit. And one of the conditions of that coastal development permit would undoubtedly be some sort of visitor serving improvement. So using the money from the paid parking to do some sort of visitor serving a permit. We never got so far as to say exactly what the final outcome would be. But one of the four examples they gave us was building a boardwalk from Del Mar parking lot over to the scenic pathway. in front of all those houses to create connectivity for public access. And actually, as I was looking back through my email chain, I had forgotten about this, but I wrote back to them and said, okay, I understand, but what if we, you know, annually split the money 50-50, basically, so the city can do some infrastructure improvements with the paid parking. And the manager wrote back and said that seems very unlikely that we would allow for that money to be used for general city improvements. It should all go towards coastal improvements. Now, having said that, this is four years ago, so we haven't had that conversation since then, but that's the actual conversation that I had with the Coastal Commission four years ago.

I appreciate the detail on that. Thank you, Brandon. And I'd say it's probably safe to say that there would be some resonant pushback at the idea of building that kind of a boardwalk in front of people's homes.

Before you turn off your mic, I have a question. I'm taking votes. I heard you say that you were in favor of having convening under Chief Treyer's direction, I believe, a group as Bob described.

I like Bob's description of it. It probably realistically would take six months or so. And it has some similarities to what we did with the street addresses, where ultimately, as we know, we did adopt that. And so this could be the direction that we're going in. But I would feel much better having a group of whatever six to 10 citizens that meet regularly that answer all those questions, because then you can have much better buy-in from the entire community if those questions are answered and people feel more comfortable going forward.

So you're a yes on that? Yes. With public process included? Yes. That was a key part of what Bob said, as with the address group. Right. All right, so that's good. Hans, you're next.

So I'm opposed to paid parking. I have a lot of smart friends, including a lot of you who've spoken tonight who support it, but I am a dissenter. Why? First, I'm very concerned that paid parking will push the problem into residential neighborhoods. Implementing paid parking doesn't change the overall demand for parking, it just rearranges it spatially. As everyone has said tonight, there's a lot of places in town, a lot of residential neighborhoods that are already heavily impacted by visitor parking, and this would just exacerbate that. As Bob has said in the past and tonight, parking is a game of whack-a-mole. And so I think a solution to make things better downtown while making things worse in residential neighborhoods, I don't think is a good trade. Second, from my conversations with residents, it's just not clear to me that paid parking has the kind of support that it would need to be viable. There is a graveyard of past efforts on this. And I guess the first question I have is, has anybody done a survey on this to actually get a sense of what people in town want? You know, we had a very imperfect survey, but I appreciate the fact that the CRA put it together and that said 68% of people in the survey were, quote, not okay with paid parking. So what does that mean? It means that trying to implement it is gonna be divisive. It's gonna take a lot of this council's finite time, energy, political capital. Think addresses like two to three years ago. And I just think honestly we have some other things that frankly I'd prefer to work on like You know the fact that we're losing our population and our families in town Third We're about to substantially, as Alessandra said, and as the chief mentioned, we're about to substantially increase parking enforcement in a way that we haven't seen in a number of years. As you've heard, we basically had sort of half a full-time person doing parking enforcement in town. And so we're going to go to two and a half people. We're completely changing the technology to this LPR system with the license plate reading. And I think we could couple it with more expensive tickets. I was a middle school science teacher in Teach for America for two years. And generally speaking, when you do an experiment, you sort of change one variable at a time. And so what I would like to see is As Alessandra said, take a year. Did it make a difference? If it doesn't make a difference, then you have this conversation. But it just seems strange to sort of do everything all at once. But finally and predictably, most importantly, I just don't see paid parking as being in keeping with the character of Carmel. And honestly, I think that as a community, we are sort of increasingly losing the thread on what makes us unique. You know, I was repeatedly told in the run-up to this that there's all these systems. You can do it all on a smartphone. You don't need a kiosk. And as we've learned tonight, You know, it turns out that the California vehicle code requires you to have kiosks. I think that once you start having people searching for those X number of kiosks, I think it's fine to say that now. You're going to have a push to have more. If you have fewer, you're going to have a ton of signage. And I sort of worry it's going to start to look like Disneyland. So sort of a quick story on the character piece. You know, sometimes Megan and I, you know, around the dinner table, we'll take the kids and we'll talk about city topics that we're talking about just to kind of stretch their minds. And so a couple weeks ago, my wife Megan brought up paid parking, and she asked our six-year-old daughter, Scout, you know, what do you think about it? And Scout kind of screwed up her face and sort of said tartly, I don't like it. And Megan was like, why not? To which Scout replied, because it wouldn't look like Carmel from the mouth of babes. And so I interjected and I asked, why not, sweetie? Why wouldn't it look like Carmel? And Scout said, because of those machines. I can't make this stuff up. We didn't load her up with that. That's just even in her short six years. Why do I tell this story, aside from it being a cute story? Because I think it captures something sort of elemental about this town. This place has a different look and feel that hearkens back to a simpler time. And so I think the uniqueness of this place, it's so basic, it's so visceral, that even a small child can see it. And so this sort of small town, place out of time character is why many of us decided to live here. And I believe it's something worth preserving. So if I'm opposed to paid parking, the obvious question is, what would I do instead? Well, I think there's a better alternative, one that addresses congestion, increases turnover, and generates some revenue. And so first, step up enforcement, like we talked about. We are quintupling the number of FTEs out there doing enforcement. We're moving to a totally different technology. Two, increase parking ticket amounts. So when we had one to two people doing this in 2023, we were making $250,000 a year. If you raise the price of that ticket from $40 to like $80 and add a third FTE, you might be pushing like $600,000 a year. So, you know, in 2025, we only brought in $140,000, right? And that would be, so this would be almost half a million dollars more in revenue. I get that there's additional costs. Third, I think we should get serious about employee parking. I think something like this, what we're talking about with the enforcement and the tickets, I bet you if you have 300 employees parking downtown, I bet you something like this might be able to cut it in half. And I think there's some other kind of carrots and sticks that we could use to get serious about the employee parking problem. The idea about making the Sunset Center lot a predominantly employee lot, same thing with Vista Lobos, maybe with some stickers, maybe with the license plate technology. I think that's really interesting. And so, you know, what's the net effect? You have a functional increase in the supply of parking downtown. you have more turnover, you have less circling and less congestion, and you're getting half a million dollars more in revenue, maybe more, and all with no character impact. So for me, like Alessandra said, I prefer to try that for a year, see how that goes, and then potentially have this conversation.

Thank you. Got to love this council. Seriously, I'm surrounded by really smart people that do their homework every meeting. So I'm on Bob's side. I think Bob said it really well. I think Jeff had some really good points. I think Alessandra had some really good points, too. I think your points are really good, Hans. But I think we need to go down the path of... turning the chief loose with a group of really smart people. If you go back three years and you tried to do addresses, to be fair to the previous councils, it wasn't easy. But this council did it because the time was right and things had changed. And I think things have changed with paid parking, and I think we need to take a close look at it. So I'm in favor of going down the path of seeing how we could do this. I personally think the revenue is great. I mean, two and a half million. It could be three million. It could be three and a half million. And that makes a real difference in our infrastructure commitment. So I'm in favor of doing this. And at that point, we have four votes. It doesn't mean Han's ideas couldn't be incorporated in that study because a lot of the things you said could be part of. I'm a little confused at how the compliance overlaps with paid parking still. But this group's going to figure that out because he's going to get some smart people. So we've got four and a half votes, I think. So... I think, is that the direction you're looking for? Well, Hans had some great ideas. It's not like I disagree with what he said. I didn't take any percentage of me.

I'm the last one to speak, so it's not fair really for me to judge him.

But I love what he said, but I think we need to try this because the revenue is there. And by the way, in terms of Del Mar, I go there a lot. And on weekends, first of all, the whole town is unlivable. Lately, and by the way, it's not summer, right? This is not summer. So it's going to get worse. And that's one reason we need to look at this. I think that the compliance is going to cause in some ways to make the problem worse, not better. And people are going to be pushed out the neighborhoods. But the neighborhoods are already completely full on weekends anyway. I don't care if it's full in my house because I live by the beach. It's okay. But it's going from first all the way down to 13th now on weekends. So I think we need to look at something. Del Mar Beach is a mess. I don't know how else to say it. I use simple words sometimes. But it's going all the way from the parking lot up to Monte Verde. And if you get stuck in that, you can't get out. And that's not good. And I think nobody would complain about paying at Del Mar Beach, especially at the rates we're talking. And I think at least we could put a sign there that says, it's full. Don't come in here. The North Lot at Sunset Center, I've been going to Forest Theater to do cleanups, and on weekends, I make the mistake of going down 8th, and you can't get out. There are 30 cars circling. There are 20 cars coming in. There are 20 cars coming down the hill, and there's nowhere to go, and that's not a good thing. It's become untenable, really, and people are just coming into Carmel, and they're driving out, and they're saying, I'm never coming back. I hear it all the time. I might get more of that than anybody, but I think this is a great idea. Chief, you did a great job tonight, and I think we're turning you loose to go come up with a great plan, and we'll just be careful about how we do it.

Thank you. Yeah, I think we have the direction we need. We heard, regardless of how you do the math, I do think there was a majority that said moving forward, we should move forward with this. It certainly will involve the council. Chief and I will work together to pull together a group of residents and business owners and people that can give us some really good feedback on it. And then we'll be back to you in the coming months with some updates. And carefully include all of Hans' comments because all of them are good. Except for the one he said don't do it, because that wouldn't be a comment we could do. No, he didn't say that. There are really good points in there.

I think he said do it very thoughtfully, but keep the character in mind.

Absolutely, and that'll be what the working group will talk about a lot, I'm sure. Thank you. Thank you. Great session.

All right, we're going to take a bio break. We've been drinking a lot of water up here, and we'll be back in 10 minutes.

So 543, Nova.

You ready? We're ready to get going here. All right, we're back in session at 543 as advertised. And... We're now gonna move on to public hearings. We have two of them tonight. And earlier council took a tour of both locations. So we've seen what this looks like on the ground. Item 10 is Resolution 2026033, Appeal APP 26134, Diamond, Scenic Road 5, northwest of 8th Avenue. And this is for consideration of an appeal by John and Patricia Dilks of the Planning Commission's approval of design study and coastal development permit application DS-25206 for non-excluded development at Scenic Road 5 northwest of 8th Avenue. The council has been presented two options, deny or appeal or grant the appeal. There is always, could be other alternatives that the council could develop, but those are the two that we've been provided so far. and I believe Evan's gonna be presenting the staff report.

Thank you, Mayor Byrne.

Go ahead.

All right, so staff is recommending that the City Council adopt resolution as presented on the slide. Also have this at the end of the presentation. So the project's for a design setting coastal development permit for a 800 square foot accessory dwelling unit. The applicant also had proposed a new roof deck above the accessory dwelling unit that has been conditioned to be eliminated and the applicant is now proposing to replace that with planting above the ADU. The project also includes landscaping, drainage improvements, and associated site work. Site is 16,000 square feet located in the R1 Zone District Park Overlay v. Triperion Overlay, Archaeological Significance Overlay and is also adjacent to an environmentally sensitive habitat area and is located within the ESHA buffer. So on April 8th of this year the Planning Commission approved the project previously described on the last slide and then on April 22nd the appellant filed a timely appeal of the project. THE GROUNDS FOR THE APPEAL WERE ANY EXCAVATION IN THE BEACH DUNE VICINITY FOR CONCERN OF BEACH EROSION, WHICH WOULD CAUSE THE ADU CONSTRUCTION ON THE BEACH SIDE OF LOT 8. THE DUNE HAS DISPLAYED SIGNS OF DESTABILIZATION AND EROSION IN WINTER MONTHS THREATENING PUBLIC USE. MUNICIPAL CODE IDENTIFIES A NUMBER OF REGULATIONS PERTAINING TO PROPERTIES IN THE BEACH RIPEARIAN OVERLAY. SPECIFIC REGULATIONS INCLUDE PERMIT STANDARDS FOR VIEW PROTECTION, LOCATION, DESIGN COMPATIBILITY, REVIEW OF CITY NEEDS, UTILITY, SEWER SERVICES, DRAINAGE, AND THEN CREATING SETBACKS FOR LOTS LARGER THAN 8,000 SQUARE FEET. Specifically, there's additional requirements for properties located west of Carmelo Street or west of North San Antonio Avenue. This is where the subject site is located. It's everything to the left of that red line on the screen. Additional requirements include identifying access requirements, certain subdivision limitations, height, open space, tree removal, prohibition on private development needing protection. So that's, for example, if a development needs shoreline protection, that would be prohibited. Certain requirements for public structures, this is not applicable in this case. Parking requirements and then setbacks, which is the same as this one for all development and all overlay areas. So specific attention was played to setback requirements. There's a lot of information on this slide, but just continuing forward, I'll hit the highlights. So for the bluff retreat setback, this is determined by a site-specific geological report, and a geology report shall be required when, so this is important to note, when do we need a geology report? And that is when A structure is proposed within an area between the face of the bluff and a line described on the bluff top by the intersection of a plane inclined at a 20 degree angle from horizontal passing through the toe of the bluff or cliff. So that's what you're seeing on the left side. There's a diagonal line. It's the 20% ascending line starting at the toe of the bluff to the top. So we don't have any development there. or 50 feet inland from the top of the bluff. So we don't have any development within 50 feet of the top of the bluff, therefore a geology report was not required. And going back, we do not have a bluff retreat setback requirement. Moving forward, when you do have a bluff retreat setback, you can't have any development except for certain public access recreation facilities because we don't have that geology report and that bluff retreat setback, this standard was not applicable. And then that leads us to our dune setback. Dune setbacks may be required to establish a buffer from natural sand dune areas to reduce visual intrusion or to accommodate public access as provided by the code. So the site is, again, within the archeological significant setback area. We do have an ARC report, which identified that the site was negative for ARC resources. The site is in the environmentally sensitive habitat buffer area. We do have a biological report on file, which concluded that there were no impacts to protected resources. The project was conditioned appropriately based on the report's recommendations. The project is, again, in the beach riparian overlay, as well as the park overlay. Excuse me. The development does not physically obstruct ocean views or alter natural landforms. We do have a soils report, which investigated geological and geologic hazards. The report concluded that the parcel is not subject It's not subject to geological hazards or other than seismic events. And there are a number of conditions of approval that implement the requirements of these two overlay districts. That's just the landscaping plan that's proposed. So with that, the Council could evaluate whether additional setbacks are necessary or warranted. But based on the information in the record, staff recommends the City Council find the setbacks for the proposed development are adequate and appropriate for the proposed project. Future development or future applications that require determination for setbacks based on factors including but not limited to changes in the context of the site or changes in environmental conditions. And with that, staff recommends that City Council adopt a resolution finding that the project is categorically exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act and denying the appeal for the project and approving or denying the various portions of the project described on the screen. And that concludes my presentation. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Evan. Well done.

Why don't we start with Hans. Do you have any questions?

Evan, do you recall the square footage, the build, the floor area of the property? The existing residence is approximately 5,000 square feet. Okay.

And so if you add this ADU, you get to like 5,800 square feet? Approximately, yes. Okay. I looked up the maximum allowable floor area on a 16,000 square foot lot and it appears to be 4,140 square feet. Is that right? Sounds about correct. Okay. And then so I guess if the maximum floor area under the code is 4,100 square feet and this ADU would be 5,800, so it's like 1,700 square feet more than it's allowed under the code. Can you just talk us through sort of why the staff is recommending approval? You know, I think Just kind of walk us through your thinking here. And I know there's been some twists and turns along the way in recent years as you think about sort of how to deal with state ADU law.

Yeah, sure. So the state has passed a number of updates to the government code pertaining to how we look at and evaluate ADUs. One of those has been that the state would like us to approve all ADUs regardless of the square footage of the existing or proposed residence up to 800 square feet. And that's been our practice for, you know, I'd say the last three or four years to allow that exception to floor area.

Now on setbacks, you know, I had a, I think there's an example of one where it's basically built in the setback, right? What's that, Monteverde and 13th?

Yes, correct.

It's like right on the corner.

I know the one you're referring to.

I just had a friend who they wanted to build an ADU and they received an email from the city staff saying that it basically said that you could not build an ADU in the setbacks even though state ADU law I think says you can build in the setbacks. And the email from staff specifically referenced our local coastal program. So is that, like, is that sort of what we're doing with ADUs on setbacks?

So in that case, I, we're effectively learning that we have a little bit more power in terms of how we apply our local coastal program and how we can address these continuing regulations that come down from the state. So in that case, the one on Monteverdean 13th, we were working under the assumption that we thought we had to do this. As we've learned in times past, we're realizing that our LCP has a little bit more control than we initially thought. So there is a line within the state statute that says nothing in... Can you feed me the line? Nothing in the state ADU laws shall diminish the effectiveness of the Coastal Act. Exactly. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thanks to be a planner. In using that, we've said you need to adhere to the front setback, for example, because that front setback is part of our community character. If you are having a 800 square foot structure within your front setback, that is violating our community character. We aren't necessarily precluding you from having that 800 square foot ADU. It just can't be in the front setback.

So we basically, we leverage the LCP on setbacks, but we're kind of going with the state when they're telling us to override our local rules on floor area.

That has been the practice, correct. Okay, thanks. Alessandra?

Thank you, Mayor. I think this is probably for Brian. I've got two questions. Is this appealable to the California Coastal Commission?

Or maybe branded? I don't know if you want to put it. Yes, it is.

And my second question is, can we as a council make a decision to send it directly to the Coastal Commission for their guidance or ruling?

Anna, do you want to talk about that one? Because I actually asked Anna that question ahead of time. The short answer is no while she's walking up, but she can give you more of the specifics because I think it's important to learn. Go ahead.

Yes, that's correct. In order for a project to be appealed to or by the California Coastal Commission, one has to be in the appeal jurisdiction, which the subject property is. But all local appeals would also have to be exhausted. So the city council would have to act in order for someone to appeal this project. I appreciate the answer. Thank you. Bob?

I don't have any questions.

Jeff?

I have a couple questions.

First, before I screw up my memory here, Hans talked about the going, you can correct me, going with the state on their sort of read of the ADU law. But the alternative view is to go with the state on their view of our local coastal program, correct? There are two things that are sort of at odds with one another. One, we have this local coastal program, which includes square footage requirements, because the state considers all of Carmel, not just this property, but all of Carmel, to you know, part of the sort of charm or feel of Carmel is like small, you know, sort of smaller houses on wooded lots to be, you know, to sort of overgeneralize that. And so that rule, those numbers that are in our, you know, that are in Title 17 that Hans was talking about, 4,140 feet or whatever that number is, Those were approved by the Coastal Commission to maintain our, to maintain our like village character, correct? Yes, that's correct. And so the state, when the state passed the ADU law, you know, so the state passed an ADU law with a lot of things in it, including this sort of 800 square foot number. We, like the city has sort of in practice been, been sort of deferring to the ADU law versus deferring to our own approved local coastal program, correct? Yes, that's correct. Okay. So that's my, okay. Just to make sure I understand that. You mentioned in your presentation that shoreline protection is prohibited. Like what does that, what does that, what does that mean?

That could be the armory or like a seawall. So if you need to construct a seawall in order to, preserve the proposed development, then that development would not be permitted.

So that property, like I don't need you to go back, but that property like is sort of on the beach and on the beach side of the property, there's a pretty steep bluff, right? I mean, it's not like the bluff on the other side of Del Mar, but it's 20 feet tall or however tall it is. And then it sort of goes up and then it kind of curves around and ends up at the house. So if that bluff, which is sand, is undermined, the property owner, like all those property owners, would not be allowed to install seawalls. Or according to our local COSTA program, they wouldn't be allowed to install a seawall or anything like that to protect their property.

That is what the code currently says. Now that I'm asked the question, I think there might have been some... a case law or a recent court case that was passed regarding protection of private property. I don't know how that relates here because the interaction between the public beach and private property, but I am remembering just in this moment right now that there is potentially a court case regarding seawalls and protection.

Okay, so the city is currently in sort of an undefined state with regards to the properties on the outside of scenic, right, regarding the armoring or lack of armoring, whatever it is, when sea level rise happens or a big storm happens or whatever that is. If we allow the property to sort of extend west towards the ocean, is the city at whatever risk we're at now, does that... increase the city's risk by allowing the development to move westward?

Do you understand? I do, yeah. I don't know if we know the answer. I think Brian's looking. I see him feverishly looking on his laptop right now. I don't know if he has the answer in there. But I think generally what you're asking is, are we creating an additional liability that the city might have by permitting expanded growth? expanded development footprint in an area that maybe could, due to climate change, erode in the future. And we might be liable for that, for the damage. I don't know the answer to that.

Can the city, so if that's the case, that we're increasing our liability, can the city, and maybe I didn't queue this up for Brian earlier, and I apologize for that. Can we protect ourselves by, can the city protect itself by asking that of the property owner that they agree not to install armoring on the coast? Make our situation better or less risky?

Well, in the three minutes I've had to look at it, there was a court case, I believe, I haven't read the case yet, called Casa Mera Homeowners Association versus the California Coastal Commission. It's a 2024 case. As I said, I haven't read the case yet, so I'm reserving any opinion on this. But it indicates, the summary I'm looking at, says that the Coastal Act only guarantees the right to build seawalls for existing structures that were built Before January 1, 1977, homes built after that date are not automatically entitled to shoreline armoring. So as you probably know, most court cases are several pages long, and I've just got a two-sentence summary of it. And I don't even know if that's accurate. I would always verify. So I just don't have an answer to your question without taking the time to read that case and maybe other cases.

I mean, that's just one I found. So would it be permissible for us if we decided to permit the ADU to put a clause in the resolution or in the... Like a condition of approval. A condition of approval to prohibit shoreline armoring? Like is that something we can legally do? Well if the concern is, is the concern potential liability of the city? The concern is increasing the liability. Whatever the city's liability is now is whatever the city's liability is now. The concern is increasing the liability to the city because the development is proceeding west.

Well, you can always put in a condition if the property owner agrees to it. So that question could be asked.

I mean, I would have to do the research. So can we as a body make that a condition of approval for this permit? That I don't know the answer to.

But I do know the answer that if the homeowner agrees to it, that you could. But I don't know the fundamental question without doing the research.

We'd have to do some research because there's actually a really interesting case. It's the Nolan Dolan case. It's actually related to the Coastal Commission about direct proportionality of conditions of approval. So we'd have to look at that. That's really your test is whether or not the condition is directly proportional to what you're trying to achieve through the condition. So we'll have to look into that. But you certainly can put a condition on there. and test it.

Okay. Finally, when we were out of the site, it appears that the only entrance to the property is through a door. Actually, we went through a front door and it seems that there's a side door sort of next to the garage. Is the idea that when this building is constructed, like, everything would happen through those two doors?

Yes, a similar question came up at the Planning Commission hearing. So there's no construction activity that's permitted through the beach lands. So it would be part of the... So they could get permission from one of their neighbors. Presumably. And that's something that's not uncommon. We often have a... I don't remember what the building division calls it, but it's effectively like a construction easement.

or it's either that or all the materials and all the work and all that comes in through either the door or like a crane that's installed on scenic or however it is that might work. Yep, correct. Thank you.

Thank you. Did you go yet? No, you didn't. Go ahead. I don't have any questions. You don't have any questions. I know we got an email today to the council about ADUs. There was a couple of them, I think. What's the status of the ADU ordinance?

You know, it's been hanging out there for a while. So we... This Coastal Commission in the state just had a... UPDATE, THEY'RE WORKING ON DRAFT GUIDANCE. IT'S THE SENATE BILL'S SB 1077. IT'S THE REQUIREMENT IS THAT THE COASTAL COMMISSION AND STATE HCD WORK TOGETHER TO PREPARE DRAFT GUIDANCE OR I GUESS IT'S NOT DRAFT ANYMORE. IT'S STILL IN DRAFT. IT WILL BE PUBLISHED BY JULY 1ST OF THIS YEAR. THAT PROVIDES DIRECTION TO COASTAL CITIES ON HOW TO UPDATE THEIR ADU ORDINANCES TO HARMONIZE WITH THE COASTAL ACT AS WELL AS STATE ADU LAW. SO THEY HAD THEIR MEETING WITH THE COASTAL COMMISSION ON MAY 13TH. THEY'RE UPDATING THEIR DRAFT TO RELEASE THE FINAL PUBLISHED VERSION. SO THAT'S REALLY WHAT WE'VE BEEN SITTING ON JUST TO SEE WHAT THAT FINAL GUIDANCE IS. THE DRAFT DOESN'T ACTUALLY SEEM TOO DIFFERENT FROM THE PREVIOUS ITERATIONS SO WE SEEM TO HAVE SOME PRETTY CLEAR DIRECTION ON WHAT WOULD NEED TO BE ACCOMPLISHED.

Were any of the questions that Hans asked, and I think Jeff may have asked one too, asked by the Planning Commission for this situation? No. What's the city's policy on changing the guidance that you're providing to homeowners in a situation like this? Are you allowed to change your concept of square footage allowed on a lot in the middle of something that's already been approved by the Planning Commission? Or do you stick, for instance, if the Monte Verde house, and I go by it like five times a day, hadn't quite got to the end of the line, can you just change the rules on them and say, go back to your architect and change it because we just changed our mind?

I'm gonna jump on that one, if that's okay. Yeah, sure. Thanks. The short answer is yes. I mean, this is an appeal in front of the city council, and the hearing's essentially de novo. You have the opportunity to change how you interpret your code. Cities have the right to interpret their codes, and yeah. The short answer would be yes, legally. Of course, there's political and fairness questions, and those are for you five to answer, but legally, the lawyer will tell me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. You would be allowed to change your interpretation. Okay, that's all I have.

All right, I guess it's time for public comment. How many do we have tonight? How many people are gonna be speaking? Oh, that's right, we have to do that first.

This is a different thing. Mr. Mayor, I think that we start with the appellant. I'll do that, I'm sorry.

Yeah, yeah. That's why we have everybody up here to remind me. I was trying to keep the meeting moving forward, but we're gonna have, I'm gonna give the applicant and the appellant 10 minutes each for all of their speakers, and then I'll give you five minutes after the process is taken if you feel you need to have a rebuttal of some sort. So let's start with the appellant first. I'm sorry, the applicant first. I imagine that's Tony. I'm sorry.

Yeah, my memory is that we've got a city policy on this. It's the appellant first, Mayor.

I had it right. Okay, good. Yeah, you had it right.

Okay, good. Does the appellant have anyone here to speak? Anybody online?

Donna Jett has her hand raised, but she's not. Are the Dilks here? Yes. Okay. So this is your turn to speak. You have 10 minutes.

You're the appellant. Yeah. Hi.

My name is John Dilks.

You have to get up close to the microphone.

I hope that you find a way to turn this down. I lived in the house next door for 46 years, on and off, mainly on. As a child, I grew up on the beach. I've always lived on the beach. I've been lucky enough to always, my home has always been on the beach, either here or in Hawaii. And I split my time back and forth. Unfortunately, we have a severe erosion problem right now in Hawaii, and they're very aggressively going after it and anybody that goes against it. There is no hardening of the shoreline. There's no protecting your property. There used to be. You could bring big sandbags in. Now they won't allow that. It's basically just sit back and wait and see what Mother Nature does. And there's some very, very sad stories there, very sad stories. People losing their home. You can pick it up on the newspapers. People losing their homes, long-term family homes, 40, 50 years, falling off the bluff on the North Shore. And there's nothing that can be done about it. In fact, the municipalities come in and cite the homeowners for polluting. It's really something else. Just today, I picked up the paper and saw a big article in the Jersey Shore about retreat, moving houses back, that they will not allow any kind of armature or revetments. They're moving back. And anybody who's lived in California knows every one of our large beaches are nowhere near as large as they used to be. And no expert can tell you what's causing it, how to keep it from happening. All they do is they try to block you from protecting it so you won't cause more downstream erosion. Now, one thing that has come out in the committees that I sat on in Hawaii is they've come out and they said, we don't feel that sorry for the homeowner. Because in most cases, they cause their own problems by building too close to mother nature. And once it's built, it's too late. You've already established the foundation. You've disrupted the soil, and now Two, three, four, five years later, slowly here it comes until they have one big El Nino winner. And we've seen them here. We've seen them here. And this year they're predicting, quote, one of the worst El Ninos you'll see in the next decades. That's bad. It's supposed to be a really severe one. They're telling people in Hawaii to take cover because of it, move their houses back. You've got to go in here, folks. I go in the ocean every day. I went in today, and even though we're coming into summer when we have a big beach, it's not big. It's not big. Not big like it was last year or the year before. You are in a shrinking environment, and if you don't face it, then you're going to be standing here, or your children will, if they're good enough or volunteer enough to do what you're doing, they'll be hearing the people begging for seawalls. Because once the dune goes, once Mother Nature that protects you goes, You got nothing left. And all this talk about setback, believe me, I've sat through all the setback moans and groans, how you've got to give me a permit for a wall because you're the one that gave me, established the setback when you gave me my building permit. Setbacks are now being And the environmentalist or the engineer that's here, the oceanographer, will testify that a lot of coastal communities now are doing what they call movable setbacks on the oceanfront. They're saying, OK, we used to be 40 feet from the high water mark. Now we're 80 feet, but we're going to add a cushion to that. We're going to add an average rate of erosion on top of that, which generally puts you back about 120 feet. So now your neighbors are out here, and you're building back here, and you've got a tunnel view. OK? Building out is a very, very bad temptation, and I'm afraid that's what my neighbor is falling to. He wants to get out there ahead of us, but he doesn't realize there are five contiguous 200-foot lots in the middle of 8th to Ocean. None of them are poor. They're all going to want to build out there just for competitive reasons. The minute they do, now instead of having them to one ADU of 800 square feet of concrete. Now you've got five of them, OK, all in a row, right up against the same setback. You don't think that's not going to dislodge that dune? Think again. It will. I've seen it happen. It's a major problem, major problem. And you have to stop it before it starts. because I tell you what else I saw. There are shops all over.

Excuse me, do you have any other speakers, or is it just you? Do I have what? Do you have any other speakers here for your side of the story? No. Okay, so you can use the whole time. Go ahead. I just want to make sure you don't run out of time.

Stores are closing all over the north shore of Oahu because of erosion. Tourists aren't coming. When the beaches go, the tourists go. When the tourists go, the tax dollars go. Pay attention to this. And who's going to tell our kids 10 years, 20 years from now, what commissions caused our beaches to go? Who didn't take a stand? Who didn't push back? This global warming and coastal erosion is here, and it's affecting everybody. You've got to say no to people building on top of the coastline. You know, when I bought my house here in 1980, I looked into adding on out front. Couldn't do it. City Hall said no every time. No, no, no. Neighbors had the same thing, trying to add on. No. When the guy built next to me, he kept his house in the same envelope as the old house because he didn't want to cause people to lose their side views. Now, that's a minor thing, but it exists. You know, it exists. People on that side of the street, people have beautiful 180-degree views. Now, in our situation... He's let the hedges grow way up so it's not as offensive as normally, but that's what's blocking all that orange tape that you see now. It's not right, folks. It's not right. People have paid a lot of money for these houses, and they pay a lot of property tax. One homeowner wanting another 800 square feet should not take their rights away from them. For all we know, they could have spent 30 years paying for a big honking mortgage to have that house. And for that to happen, it's not fair. Now, maybe it's legal, but it's not equitable in any kind of real estate law that I've ever read. I just ask you to think about this. But my big problem is and worry is you dislodge that dune out front, and that beach is gone. Because this morning when I went down for my swim, It's almost vertical, so straight down. Now, if that's the way it is in the beginning of summer, imagine how it's going to be in December. Because we call it the land of two beaches. It's one beach in December and January, and it's a completely different beach in the summer and the spring. But I've noticed through the years, through 40-some years, that difference is narrowing. It's narrowing. And by the time our kids get our age, where they're making decisions on our behalf or somebody else's behalf, there may not be a beach. I mean, there are beaches that you cannot safely access or exit. You might be able to swim in them if you can get to them, but you can't exit or exit from them safely. And this is a community with no lifeguards? Oh, my god. You don't know what could unfold in your lap. You've got a couple of situations here that you could control just by saying no to one family. Please do that. Don't ruin this special environment. You stood there in his yard. You looked how special that environment is. It's amazing. Well, that doesn't come cheap or free. People hawk their souls to buy those places and pay those mortgages and hope to be someday retired and can live there without a mortgage. And then somebody comes along and wants to take their side views or impact their side views or jeopardize the whole thing by setting us up for erosion. I know I'm passionate about this, but that's my family home. It means everything to me. And I'm one of those guys that wrote that check every month, every month for 30 years. It's important. Plus, I'd like to leave it to my kids, and I'd like to have some beach yard left when I leave it to them.

Thank you, Mr. Dill.

Protect this. Protect this community. Think about the people that come down here and spend all their money every weekend and go to that beach and have a wonderful picnic. They won't come if they can't get on it.

Okay, thank you. Your time is up. All right, so now the applicant. How many speakers are you going to have?

Dr. Griggs is with me. So you have two. Right. And he'll speak if the council wants to speak to the, ask questions. He is the foremost expert in this field on the West Coast of the United States. Okay, you have 10 minutes total. Professor at UC Santa Cruz. So next slide, please. We can start. I think we under, oh, sorry, this one. Got that. I think we heard the appellant's reason. At the very end, I think we heard the real reason, the impact of their side views because they distributed a photograph to the neighborhood, which I'll show you in a minute. As to the location of the ADU, as you can see from this slide, there are five homes that are actually far further forward than the proposed ADU. You can see one and two to the south, three, four, and five to the north. And the ADU is where the red line is, which is landward of any of those five buildings. There it is on the slide plan. You can see as we saw today, it's significant distance from the beach. This is the photograph that the appellant circulated to the neighbors complaining about the effect it would have on their view. We've superimposed the actual building as approved by the Planning Commission on top of that. As you can see, it will have no effect on anyone's view. The ocean is still clearly visible behind. After the appeal was filed, we asked Herod Kasunich, which is a well-respected local geotechnical firm, to analyze the appeal. And they concluded that the dunes are not retreating, that this is an appropriate building site. It will not affect nor cause beach erosion. The staff's analysis regarding bluff setback retreat is correct. Landscaping irrigation will retain water on site. and it will cause no destabilization of dunes on the beach. This is what you could see in front of the buildings today. In fact, this beach is far more stable than it was 50 years ago. You can see from Dr. Grigg's report, his photographs saying this will absolutely have no effect on the stability of the dunes or the shoreline. Here's a photo from 1979 on the left with Diamond's home in 2024. You can see the vegetation has actually progressed towards the beach and not retreated from the beach during those intervening years. DR. GRIGGS CONCLUDED BY ANALYZING MR. DILK'S COMPARISON TO EROSION HE HAS SUFFERED ON HIS OTHER HOME IN HAWAII AND SAID THERE'S NO CONNECTION BETWEEN THE TWO AND NO WAY TO COMPARE THE TWO, THAT THIS HAS NO EFFECT OR THIS HOUSE IS IN NO WAY RELATED TO THE EROSION HE'S SUFFERING IN HAWAII. SO, AND ANSWER TWO QUESTIONS. ONE IS THE STATE LAW SPECIFICALLY PROHIBITS the city or county or any city, from counting ADUs against FAR. So it's not a matter of interpretation. It's a prohibition. So you can't deny someone a home, an ADU, because it increases the FAR. In answer to Councilmember Barron's question, the Coastal Commission frequently, if not universally, imposes conditions saying that applicants shall not request shoreline armoring structure afterwards, and those conditions are legal. If you exercise the permit, with a condition like that, you can't go back later and complain about it. And the Dilks, I mean, sorry, and the Diamonds are absolutely willing to agree to a condition that says that they will not request shoreline armoring in the future as a result of this permit or for any other reason. And as you can see from Dr. Grigg's report, it is clear that in the last 85 years, the beach in Carmel has been stable And there's nothing about the construction of this ADU which will do anything to affect the stability of those dunes. And that's not my opinion. It's not the architect's opinion. It's not the diamond's opinion. It's the opinion of the two most respected, and I would say in the case of Dr. Griggs, world respected experts in this field, that this will have absolutely no effect and no impact on coastal erosion. With that, Dr. Griggs, would you like to? say a couple of words about coastal erosion. You're far more qualified to discuss than I.

Thank you for the time to talk to you. I don't want to take any more of your time. I would just say there's absolutely no connection between what's happening in Hawaii and what's happening in Carmel. Totally different islands, totally different geology, totally different coastlines. Coastline is eroding in Hawaii. It's eroding on New England. It's eroding in central Monterey Bay. I understand people like their ocean view and they want to protect that. But again, as Tony said, Fillon has been stable for at least the 85 years of available coastal aerial photographs. You can see the vegetation is actually moving seaward. This construction will have absolutely no effect on the bluff. and no effect on the erosion of the shoreline. So I don't see, I understand the points made by the earlier speaker about wanting to live in your house on the coast, but none of those arguments on a Y relate to what's happening here in Carmel. You have very stable coastline. Sea level is actually rising very, very slowly today. When I ask students in my classes, how high is it rising per year? How fast? It's four millimeters a year, the thickness of two nickels. That's the rate of sea level rise. It's these extreme events. We have an El Nino coming, but the coastline of Carmel has remained stable through all the El Ninos of the last century or so. So thank you. Thank you.

Mayor, I have a question. Are we going to hear from the architect? Because I do have questions for the architect.

He's here. He has four minutes left.

Okay.

Sounds like you'd like to hear from him.

Yes, please. All right. Thank you, Mr. Siliano.

Yes, Alexandra.

So I actually have three questions, and I just want to preface this. This is not a construction management plan question about where to park the vehicles and all that, although that is a concern with this neighborhood and the amount of traffic and tourists that it gets. But it's more about logistics. We toured the site, and if Nova, if it's not too much trouble, if we could see the photo. We were given this photo, and I believe it's in Mr. Lombardo's slides that we just saw. So my first question is, how do you plan to tear apart part of the terrorists? You see the portion where, right here, You told us that you would need to take some of that up to build the ADU because it's going to be right up against it. And in fact, the pool actually goes around. There we go. Perfect. Thank you. So what sort of equipment is involved and how will you get it on site? As I mentioned, we toured the site. It has very narrow, steep pathways going down that only a person could walk on. You certainly couldn't get any kind of large equipment in there. Question number two is how do you plan on... taking out the debris that will be generated from the demolition, and also when you're doing the drainage and the site work. And question number three, how do you plan on bringing equipment to excavate the site so the foundation can be laid for the new ADU? And once again, issues with drainage and plumbing and how you would secure the foundation.

OK. Thank you. Good question. As we all know, in general, tight sites. As far as demolition is concerned, I'll address that first. The area that we're talking about, which I pointed out earlier, is a small area of landscape berm or wall. So it will be hand-removed and hand-carried towards scenic. As far as during the construction phase, foundation digging will be by hand, no equipment needed, because Most of Carmel is sandy. There's sand, so there's no issue about getting heavy equipment out there. So during construction, everything will be hand dug. Materials will be carried to that side yard where you walk today. It's going to be challenging, but it's doable. As far as concrete is concerned, because probably that's the next question, how do you bring concrete? Concrete truck has very long hoses. that will take it to the site where we're pouring foundation. So labor will be all hand dug, Carpentry will be hand dug. Right now, their landscape maintenance guy uses that path every week as they maintain their very nice landscaping. So he carries in wheelbarrow implements for his gardening. So to answer your question, Alessandra, yes, we have prepared for that contingency, and we're aware that it will be a challenge but doable.

Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Do you have any other speakers? I was going to give you time anyway, but you've got plenty of time now. All right. So seeing that there aren't any other speakers for the applicant, the appellants, I'm going to open it up for public comment. How many speakers do we have?

Just a couple. Okay.

Maybe three.

Good evening, everybody. It's me again. I wasn't planning on speaking on this item, but there's something that really leaps out to me that's not been considered yet. It's in our general plan under the coastal resource management element. The beach dunes have a species of special concern. It was a black legless lizard. and also a federally listed endangered species called Tidestrom's lupine. I looked at the biologist's report that the Diamonds commissioned, and the assessment for the presence of these species consisted of a walkthrough. a walkthrough, like a one-time visit, right? And then they note, oh, it was not, and the walkthrough was not conducted during the optimal time of year, i.e. the spring season for identifying native annual plant species that have the potential for occurring on the property and in the surrounding areas. So I think that doing just a walkthrough to monitor for a federally listed endangered species seems woefully inadequate when it's incumbent upon our municipality to protect these things and the poor blacklist the poor black legless lizards, you know, everybody calls them snakes, and it's just, I feel for the little critters, right? But still, seriously though, it is a responsibility, right? And I know they have a management plan to be on the lookout for the little guys. That's not really adequate, I feel, right? And then I think that Mr. Dilks is right. You all know he's right. When all the other property owners are going to want to build ADUs in their dunes, you know that's a real thing, right? And so I would like to have more of a consideration for the erosion concerns he's bringing up. When you are excavating and creating the possibility of more erosion, you know, you have the possibility of runoff into Carmel Bay and we are part of the National Marine Sanctuary. So you know what time it is? it's time for an environmental impact report, right? And you can ask for one, even if you think this thing is CEQA exempt, and I frankly am surprised that you're finding it CEQA exempt, but to protect the city, to address all these very complicated issues, I think the city ought to call for an environmental impact report. Thank you.

You've got time. And maybe Mr. Griggs wants to respond, too. Maybe we'll finish public comment. We're not finishing public comment.

As part of the applicant's report.

We won't let you respond. I've given you five minutes, or you have seven minutes, actually. You'll have plenty of time. All right, anybody else? I think there's only one other hand up.

Yes.

It's Larry Chase, and I'm the neighbor across the street. I speak for myself and the Nelsons.

We have no problem with the Diamonds doing this project. Okay, thank you. We have one other.

He lives across the street. Hi, I'm Patricia Dilks. He lives across the street, and he has no issue with it because he knows that the alternate place for it would be over the garage, which would really block his view. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. I didn't see any other hands. You want to speak? Yeah, come on up. On behalf of anybody you like, your public comment.

My name's Earl Myers. I'm very good friends with the Diamonds. They're some of the nicest, kindest, good-hearted people you'd ever want to meet. I want to bring up a subject that has to do with the next door neighbor. And I believe that this is based on a vendetta from many, many years ago. And since that original problem occurred, there's been other issues along the way that have been brought up. And it's pretty obvious because original appeal and opposition to the permit was made because of a view and the planning commission came by and I know they decided there was no view problem. And then as you probably saw today, when you went by the property, there is no view problem. So in order to make this more difficult for the Diamonds, they came up with this beach erosion problem. Now, why aren't they appealing it based on the view again? Because that didn't work. So I think that everyone should consider that there's a lot more in the history and many years ago that's causing this time-consuming issue to be brought up twice, once to the Planning Commission and now to the Council. And I think the Diamonds are very ecologically minded people. They wouldn't want to do anything to harm the beach. They live on the beach. And I would like to see it approved. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, last chance. I'm afraid I don't see anybody else. Go to Zoom. Pardon?

We got two people on Zoom.

Oh, we do? Okay. Go ahead.

Donna Jack, go ahead.

Good evening. I guess you can't see me, but you can hear me.

We can hear you, Donna.

Okay. To the honorable mayor, city council, staff, and residents. When Mr. Dilks brought up about his 30 years of payments, the Diamonds made payments, too, on their mortgage. The Diamonds bought a property that was in disrepair and made it a beautiful home. The Diamonds are, without exception, stewards of this property. It was on the cover of Sunset Magazine. The objection to this ADU that it would impact any area of the neighborhood is wrong, is wrong. It will be executed with the same high standards as their home is. I've been a friend of the Diamond family for almost 30 years. I worked for them for several years and they would do nothing but Make this better. And the community, if you knew what they have done for this community, they've kept it quiet. They're not the kind of people that want their name on everything. I urge the city council and the staff to seize this appeal for what it is. an unfounded attempt to obstruct a compliant, responsibly planned project and to allow this wonderful local family to move forward with their ADU. The neighbor was a problem and the gentleman who spoke before, it is revenge or retribution. The neighbor didn't like what they did and you've toured the house, you've toured the property and you can see what they have done is amazing. The yard in the back is incredible. We've done two weddings there, small family weddings. So I urge you, I urge you, and I thank you for your time, your commitment to fairness in our community. They should be treated fairly, not by one disgruntled neighbor. Thank you.

Thank you, Donna. Chris?

Can you hear me?

I can.

Yes, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to comment. I'm perfectly happy to believe that the Diamonds are lovely people, and I don't even want to talk about sea level rise or the legless lizard, but to me, I want to speak about a broader point that's raised by this application. I think the entire ADU situation in Carmel is is not only something that's raised my blood pressure significantly over the past few years, but it's something we've got to do something about. The whole reason the state decided to make significant changes in the law to encourage ADUs was because of our housing crisis. ADUs can be important. They can give income to the homeowner and they're an important source of low-cost housing for our workforce. In some communities that makes sense. I've read that it's provided some welcome relief in some communities, but that's not our situation here. The people who are buying houses in Carmel now at these staggering prices in the millions have applied in droves for ADUs for one reason, to increase the square footage of their living space. They love the beach, they love the town, but they're impatient because there's a shortage of large palatial houses. They don't want to settle for the small cottages, which are the emotional centerpiece of this town's history and its charm. And they have no interest in expanding our housing supply. I think this case is a perfect example. The Diamond Family House has been described tonight as 5,000 square feet, and one of the items or pieces of paper in the packet said it was closer to 5,600 square feet. I live in a little cottage on Camino Real. Four of my homes would fit into the Diamond's home. They want to add another 800 square foot guest house. They've taken advantage of the ADU laws, which seem to make an application for an ADU a slam dunk. And as a city, we've just got to do something to bring this practice to a halt. The local coastal plan includes references to the importance of the character of the town, and it's, I think they said, small, well-crafted cottages. The Diamonds have a well-crafted house, but if they're able to build their ADU, they'll have a cottage of about 6,000 square feet. It doesn't sound like there's a mechanism for postponing a decision in this case and referring it to the Coastal Commission for their comment. But I don't see why we can't use the LCP to push back in this case and grant the appeal. And I'd like you to consider actually halting further ADU applications which will, until the city has a chance to kind of drill down and consider a path which will prevent these small, well-crafted cottages from being transformed into overbuilt lots with maximally sized ADUs, which do nothing to increase our housing stock, but just provide more square footage for wealthy homeowners. Thank you. Thank you, Chris.

All right, I don't see any more questions. people for public comment, so I'm going to bring it back to answer the questions that came up from Tony and Mr. Griggs. Would you like to answer the questions?

So now we're in five-minute rebuttal?

Well, they had two and a half minutes left. If you want to use the two minutes you had left, come on up. You should have come up before. Thank you for listening.

I'm Marty Diamond, and I'm one of the owners of the home. As I mentioned before to the Planning Commission, the reason for this ADU, we lost our daughter a year and a half ago. through pancreatic cancer. We did not know, expect that to happen. And as a result, we thought she was going to be there, the oldest of all of our children, to be able to take care of us. And when that happened, we said, you know, we have to start thinking about we've got to take care of ourselves. What are we going to do? So we did know about the ADU. And we said, this is a perfect time to be able to find a place where we can have a caretaker. Amongst our friends, we have friends that are going through dementia. We have friends that are on canes, on walkers, have Parkinson's. And we're at that age, too. We don't know when that's going to happen to us. So we wanted this ADU as a place to have a caretaker. So we could still enjoy the home, but have privacy and have somebody take care of us during the interim. And so I am pleading with you, pleading to please let us build this. I think you've been to our property. We will do it in a very tasteful manner. What the Dilks will see will be a beautiful garden that, if they are concerned about any views, And this hostility has gone so far. We feel very emotional about this. We're philanthropic. And yes, you can say we have a large home. We do have a large home. We're still working at our age, where many people have long retired, and yet we work every day. We have given over 70 scholarships to children that cannot go to college. I'm Hispanic. A lot of them are from Hispanic communities. And they go out and they pick the vegetables and fruits on the fields before they actually go to school. And we're very proud to give that money to them. So this isn't about Steve and I having a lot of money. We give our money away. And we feel very blessed to be living in this home. We welcome people. We would love to share this beautiful home with people. And I just wish this would end and you would just let us move forward. And I will tell you, it will be very tastefully done. And I don't know what more to say. I think my two minutes is up. Thank you for listening.

Thank you, Marty. All right, so now if there were some questions that came up, that regarding the building on the bluff, all four houses, five houses developing, would you like to make a comment on that, Mr. Griggs? I mean, I had a question about that if nobody else. I mean, that's just not about their house. It's about all the other houses.

No, I'm just concerned of trying to figure out where the bluff is. When I think of a bluff, I think of something that's 30 or 40, 50 feet high that drops vertically to the ocean. Here we've got a really mature set of dunes that are well vegetated, and nobody is building out on the front of the dune, which is a sensitive area. So they're 135 to 145 feet landward of the top of the dune. So I don't see any encroachment issue if people don't come any further seaward than that.

So you don't see a problem with everybody creating an ADU in their backyard?

Well, I guess it depends on what it looks like and where you put it, but I'm thinking if you're back 130... I mean geologically. Pardon me?

Geologically, I mean in terms of the dune.

I do not see a problem in this location.

Okay. All right, anybody else have a question of any of the... experts that are here now. All right. Thank you. All right. I think that's all the comments we have, so let's bring it back for discussion. Jeff, you want to start?

Sure. I always get the hard ones. You know, I... I had a conversation with staff last week about the LCP, and you heard me ask a couple of questions about the LCP and interaction between the Coastal Commission and HCD and the bind that we find ourselves in. And Evan talked a little bit about going back eight years when the city first permitted, I think you talked a little bit about when the city first permitted first permitted ADUs in the situation that we find ourselves in. And I think that this is sort of the first opportunity that the council, I believe it's the first opportunity that the council has had to consider sort of the interaction between the state's ADU law and the state's Coastal Act. And through the state's Coastal Act, the state's LCP, which talks about the character of Carmel, And I'd like to read, Evan talked about some upcoming guidance that we expect on the 1st of July. And I think that what I'd like to do is read this section of this guidance. Admittedly, this is draft for the next month. During the time before an LCP is updated to reflect the current language of ADU law, local governments, that's us, will need to carefully consider the extent to which they can apply their existing LCP provisions to regulate proposed ADU projects. In general, if a government's LCP does not contain any ADU regulations, and to be clear, that's Carmel. We do not have any ADU regulations. Then it should process applications for ADUs pursuant to the state ADU standards contained in government code 663010, but with the LCP lens applied. The government should still review such applications for consistency with applicable coastal resource protection standards. And it lists a number of standards. Applying these types of standards, which may at times require discretionary review, will ensure that ADU projects that proceed under state law will not lessen the intended effect of the Coastal Act as carried out through LCBs. So the first thing to notice in this thing that I read, this guidance says, applying these types of standards, which may at times require discretionary review, So that is something that the city generally eschews doing for reasons that I don't quite understand that we've been doing for a number of years now, eschewing discretionary review. So I think I've talked about this quite a bit in the past about the problems that we have with ADUs and not allowing discretionary review. And this guidance opens that. This guidance that I'm seeing for the first time, that I saw for the first time last week, opens that door for us to apply discretionary review. And the next step is, what does the word discretionary review mean when it comes to ADUs? And we have a set of, we have Title 17, which is the zoning code of Carmel. which is part of our local coastal program. So that has been approved by the Coastal Commission as preserving the charm of Carmel. And we have our residential design guidelines, which many of you know about because Bob and I are trying to write that project to revise those guidelines. And those guidelines are also part of Carmel's local coastal program. And the question is how to balance the Coastal Commission's basically edict. It was the Coastal Commission that forced Carmel to adopt this LCP in 2003. And there was quite a bit of consternation. And as some background, back in 2003, all of Carmel was subject to the Coastal Appeals Zone, which is now what What has been brought up a couple times about peeling this appealing this project at the Coastal Commission The Coastal Appeals on used to be all of Carmel Until the until Carmel adopted his LCP in 2003 every single house in Carmel was subject to was subject to appeal to the Coastal Commission and The Coastal Commission basically stopped approving houses in Carmel until Carmel adopted an LCP and and the 1,800 foot limit and I'm speaking about 4,000 foot lots the 1,600 foot house with the 200 foot garage was a big issue of concern to the Coastal Commission. So it is clear that in 2003 the house sizes in Carmel were at the top of the list in terms of how to protect Carmel's charm and And so these regulations, you know, we have applied these regulations, you know, the city has applied these regulations about 4,000, you know, about 1,800 square feet, in this case 4,140 square feet, and has always taken the position that the ADU should exist outside, should exist outside that law. So the 800 square foot ADU that's sort of facilitated or allowed by the by the state's ADU, various states' ADU laws, should be exempt from that 4,140 square feet. Like, that has always been, you know, the city has sort of taken that position. But Tony Lombardo stated that state law prohibits the application of ADU space in terms of its calculation of floor area requirements. What we heard, you know, we heard earlier from staff, and I could get Brandon to read it again, I'm sure he's kind of queued up maybe to read it again, where there's a section in the ADU law that states that no section, no part of this law should be interpreted, and feel free to correct me, no part in this ADU law should be interpreted to subvert cities' LCPs. Shall not diminish the effect of the Coastal Act? Shall not diminish the effect of the Coastal Act. And our LCP is a direct result of the Coastal Act. So every house, every property in Carmel is subject to the Coastal Act. This entire village is. And I believe that this is the first swing that I think the council has gotten in terms of interpreting the sort of interaction between the Coastal Act and the ADU Act that's sort of enforced by. So these two acts, they're enforced by two different arms of the state government, which are trying to figure this out. And I believe that the decision, the path that we have gone down, that we should not have gone down eight years ago, that was a mistake. And this is on us or previous people up here for not doing a better job of policing what is going on. I'm perfectly willing to take that since I've been up here. But I think it's time to start. And I think, honestly, that ADUs in Carmel, we need to get this under control. The ADUs in Carmel should be subject to the floor area ratio that is specified in our municipal code. And there are areas of the Carmel municipal code that are at odds with the ADU ordinance that do not have anything to do with the floor area ratio. So there are certainly other aspects of the Carmel municipal code that are different. But in terms of the floor area ratio, I think that ADUs and Carmela should be subject to the floor area ratio of the Coastal Act. And that's my position. So I would grant the appeal.

Thank you. Bob, you want to go next?

Not really, but I will. Starting with the end in mind, I am more inclined to deny the appeal. Although I agree with pretty much everything Jeff just said. I was on the Planning Commission when really the ADU things heated up and at the time was vehemently opposed, in fact offended, that the state in their infinite wisdom, one-size-fits-all mentality decided to pass laws that just said, you know, stuff it. You have to do this. And I felt I pushed back on the Planning Commission at the time and just got nowhere because really the general response we received from our staff at the time was this is binding. This is what the people in Sacramento have decided. And if that bothers you, tomorrow's election day. So think about that. It bothers me. And I think you're exactly right, Jeff, that the floor error ratio is probably the one, it's sort of the battle to fight it over, because I think it might be winnable for the reasons you say. But why would I, so with all that said, why would I deny the appeal? I'm just not sure this is the vehicle for doing it, because I don't think it's fair. And I've got an ADU behind me. I've got an ADU kitty corner from me and another one next to that and another one next to that. Four in a row behind my house. They all got built. It annoys me that that put people closer to me. But the fact is I didn't fight it because I was convinced that those people had the right to do that and that they were told they had the right to do that and the Planning Commission agreed and approved those ADUs because that was state law. And this appeal wasn't challenging an ADU. This appeal wasn't challenging a few. It wasn't based on privacy. It wasn't based on any of those things. This appeal was based on concerns about erosion and undermining the bluff. And I'm no geological expert on any of these things, so I have to rely on that of others. And our own fairly sophisticated regulations that Evan clarified for us about when it is wrong to advance towards the ocean and when it's not, and that this particular ADU is well back from the bluff in the ocean in terms of what is required. So if we as a group want to want to pick a fight with the state and we want to use the Coastal Commission as our vehicle to do that, that's a different discussion to me. But I do not think it's fair to make the diamonds the tool that we use to do that when 82 people before them had their ADUs approved using all the same rules in place. So that's kind of where I come down on it. And apparently we can't push this to the Planning Commission. Perhaps the appellate can, but I would deny the appeal. Thank you.

Hans, you want to go?

Sure. So first of all, I guess I would just say I generally think that the ADU is tasteful. You could imagine an ADU that was proposed here that was dominating the space. I think that this one is sunk down. It's sort of humble. It has a green roof that in some ways is designed to sort of be camouflaged with the surrounding area. I'm hearing you that it's, you know, for a care potential future caretaker unit. I am genuinely sorry to hear about the loss of your daughter and sort of what prompted this. So I do have a significant sympathy for that. The, you know, sort of on the merits that are kind of originally proposed here, you know, I, in general, like, so it's adjacent to an environmentally sensitive habitat area. Um, but you know, Ian, like this site currently is, is a hard scaped patio. So I'm, you know, I'm not, I'm just not seeing that one. Um, the bluff retreat setback, uh, You know, it's beyond the bluff retreat setback, right? So it's not proposed to be built in that area. There's some additional sections about, you know, dune access and recreational area setbacks. Apparently you can't see this ADU from the beach. Again, it's sort of humbly designed. You know, it's not going to... impede access to the beach at all. So sort of on the merits, I don't see, I don't see problems there. I think a more interesting question is this other line of questioning that sort of I started with Evan earlier, which is just, is this ADU allowed under our local coastal program? And As Jeff said, this is in some ways a sui generis case for us. As far as I know, the council hasn't had a pure ADU case come before us before. In some ways, any time that you change your policy, there's always going to be people that came before. There's always going to be people stuck in the middle of the process. I had some friends who were parents in my kid's class who were under the impression that they could build in the front setback. And so they spent a whole bunch of money designing an ADU in the front setback. And then they got an email. And it said, you can't do that. Why can't you do that? Because our LCP prohibits you from doing that. And so they had spent all this money. They were in the process. My point is that Any time you change the policy, somebody's going to be in the middle of the process. And so when I look at our LCP, and I don't know, Nova, were you able to get my email at all? No? Nova's going to work on pulling up a slide, but... Basically, it is a slide that shows visually our local coastal program and which documents are embedded in it because I think it's actually really helpful because it just sounds so kind of abstract when you say it, but there's almost everything that matters for land use and development in terms of Carmel documents is in that. And so some of the things that are in there are key elements of our general plan, like our land use and community character element, our coastal resource management element, our forest management plan, our entire zoning code, all of Title 17. So our residential and commercial design guidelines, when we talk about the local coastal program, all of those documents, right? So in some ways, I think we need to remember that. And I'll just start with chapter 17, which is our, of our code, which is our zoning code. There's three parts that sort of regulate how much of the lot you can use. And one is setbacks. Two is site coverage. And when we talk about site coverage in the code, it's basically like how much essentially impermeable space you can have outside of the footprint of the actual building. And then lastly, it's floor area. Like how many square feet of built area are you going to have? And to points that were made earlier, these rules were not selected randomly. The amount of space that you're allowed was not selected randomly. They're designed to work in concert to maintain the character of the community, which is a village of small cottages in a forest. So when you build something in the setbacks, like we saw at 13th and Monteverde, you clearly alter the character of the community. And when you have too much building mass, you alter the character of the community. I think you can see that with some of the buildings that were built in the 1980s. I think there was a period of time when people could go significantly larger. And similarly, if you try to squeeze 800 square feet of an ADU onto some of these postage stamp lots, you know, on the small amount of open space that we have, you, you know, crowd out the forest and, um, you change the look and feel of the town. Um, and so, you know, when I look at our general plan, our community character element, which is again, part of, part of our local coastal program and protected by the coastal act, the introduction reads in part, um, The city has conscientiously retained its residential village character in a forest setting. The special character of this residential community is considered a unique asset of statewide and national significance that should be maintained as a resource both for local residents and for visitors. The incorporated limits of the city of Carmel-by-the-Sea shall be designated a special community at a highly scenic area, within the meaning of Coastal Act provisions such and such, new development shall protect this special community and its unique characteristics. So... These concepts are deeply embedded in all of our foundational documents. And I do think that I have no problem if somebody wants to build an ADU where their home is below the square footage limits and there's some room for an outbuilding. I think that's fantastic. And I think it would be great if that ADU was occupied and helped with our population loss problem. But like Bob, I have sort of this... this visceral reaction against being told by the state that our foundational documents that were painstakingly crafted to come up with these specific limits are somehow just thrown out the window. And so to me, I think rewinding the clock in this scenario makes sense. And it's, It's not something, it's something that we've actually done before, as I mentioned in my question on setbacks, the staff initially went down this road of taking interpretation of our setback requirements go out the window because that's what state ADU law says. And now they subsequently took a different position as my friends found out when they got that email, which was that now we're holding fast to those setback requirements because of some of these LCP protections. And so I don't see the difference between what we did on the setbacks and what you could do here with something like floor area, for example. And so again, it's the first time in My understanding, I talked to staff a little bit about this, that it's come before the council. And so in some ways, it's our first bite at the apple. And I think we should just hold fast to what's in our foundational documents.

I am. certainly appreciate the arguments that both Jeff and Hans made. And they've been very persuasive. And I think that, ultimately, this is going to be a test case. This is the first time, as Hans just said, that something like this has come up. And I do think it is fundamental that we stand up for our community character and also our founding documents and this This ADU thing is definitely having an impact on our community and changing the look and feel of our community. And this is our opportunity to basically stand up and push back a bit against the state for what has been going on. I do share the concerns of the appellant. This is a very highly sensitive area, not only the archaeological overlay, the park overlay, the beach biperion overlay. And we need to protect our sand dunes. I mean, our beach is our number one asset, and we are stewards and need to protect it for future generations to come. And I do think there will be a temptation for all the surrounding houses to also want to build an ADU. It's sort of a, you know, he did it, I get to do it too. And I will grant the appeal. And as I said, I think it's a test case to see what is allowed under our LCP. And as Chris Campbell said, the impact that these ADUs are having on our entire community. So that's where I'll stand.

All right, it's my turn. Do you have something to say? I'll wait for you. Go ahead.

Go ahead.

City Attorney wants to make a comment. I'm going to wait for you.

Okay.

So I think before we go down this path, we should think about what we're doing. I think that all of the points that are being made are good. I wish we had done it three years ago. and we wouldn't be in the position we're in. I don't feel comfortable, as Bob didn't, in using a test case for somebody that's already gone through the Planning Commission and has had the project approved by the Planning Commission who could have done the same thing. I don't think it's fair. I think if we're gonna do this, we should do it through a process. multiple years trying to come up with an ADU ordinance that did this. And maybe we have some new tools in our toolkit at this point. And I think we should use them and do it that way rather than making the test case out of somebody who's already been approved by the Planning Commission. I just don't feel comfortable doing that at all. And we actually have someone who's actually going to have somebody living in the ADU other than the people that built it and using it for a second for their kids to come up a couple times a year. I also find it interesting that at the very time when we got our housing element approved prior to going through the planning commission and the council, and it's heavily reliant on building ADUs, if we're going to limit the ADU size to the FAR, you're not going to get as many ADUs. Because let's face it, they were building them to increase the square footage on their lot. So I think we really need to be careful what we do here. because we could be destroying the one way we were actually going to be able to have some additional housing in our housing element. And I'm on Bob's side. I'm happy to reopen the discussion if you guys have any further opinions before we go down this path, if you could change your mind. Because I think we're doing something that could be risky in several different ways.

Could I just add something? My question at the beginning of the meeting is this is technically not the final decision because this is appealable to the Coastal Commission.

Well, your decision would be final if it's not appealed to the Coastal Commission. But whoever is aggrieved by, if anyone's aggrieved by your decision, they can appeal it to the Coastal Commission. It's not a guarantee, though. It doesn't go there automatically.

We have rebuttal time if you guys want to.

With respect, we've heard fraud.

Well, they actually didn't use a rebuttal time. They have five minutes left.

I should clarify that. I think Mr. Lombardo is actually correct that a denial is not appealable. An approval is appealable. A denial would be final action.

Why don't you make that perfectly clear? I'd like to hear what Mr. Pierrick has to say.

Well, what I would say is that the recommendation from the staff was to deny the appeal. So there's no resolution that is in front of you to grant the appeal. So there's that issue to consider. And I think another issue to consider would be whether there should be some additional research both by your city attorney and the staff with regard to the points that have been made in the hearing this evening with respect to whether the city is required to approve the 800 square foot ADU or not. and that's what I've been hearing is that there's Apparently a number of you and not asking you to take a vote now but there's some of you that have expressed concerns about the floor area ratio and and setbacks and the like so my recommendation would be that you continue this hearing until your meeting in July and then We could, at that time, present to you the legal analysis with respect to these issues that have been presented here this evening. And I would also recommend that at that hearing that you be presented with two resolutions. One of them would be the resolution that was before you tonight, and the other resolution would be one that would be drafted to grant the appeal based upon the reasoning that we've heard this evening. But I believe that given the discussion and the analysis that it would be in the best interest of the city and the parties to have this further reviewed before you make a decision on it. Have that come back to you in July with a thorough analysis of the issues that I've been hearing this evening. Have staff spend some more time with it based on what's said tonight, and then come back to you with the two resolutions, and that way you would have the opportunity to consider the analysis that's been presented to you in July and make a decision and vote on it. on a resolution, whichever one you choose to vote on based upon that additional input.

I have a question. Is the legal analysis that you're proposing doing, is that related to this one ADU or is that related to city policy? It would be related to this appeal.

And if you're asking for further research beyond the issues presented in this appeal, we can certainly do that. But I'm not proposing that there'll be some broad analysis done on ADU law as it might apply in every circumstance. What I'm suggesting is that the research be focused on the diamond property, what the project is, what the rules are, the statutes, case law interpretation, city practices, city policies, and put all that together and bring it back to you in July with the two resolutions, and then you can discuss it, give the parties another opportunity to present their views after they've had an opportunity to review the staff report for that July meeting, and then you could take further public input at that time, ask questions, deliberate, and make a decision. So that's my recommendation.

All right, you want to have a discussion? Bob, do you have an opinion? Yeah.

Yeah, thanks Brian. I think we have to do that. I mean, I have serious concerns that we lack the legal foundation to be able to deny the appeal. I don't know what the consequences intended and especially unintended are. And I think my colleagues are about to kind of pick a fight without a plan for tomorrow. If you want to pick a fight with the state over ADUs, fine. But I mean, you've already heard me. I really question that this is the vehicle to do that. I think there could be a different vehicle to do that where we don't have this appeal ongoing and essentially creating a distraction to the main event, which is trying to enforce the integrity of our LCP, as you all have pretty eloquently stated. And I'm just really concerned that we're, by... granting the appeal, we're just going into unchartered territory and we don't have a compass and we just don't know where we're going. In general, that's not a very good idea. I don't think that's the path we have to follow. Brian, I would ask you in your analysis to also address some of those concerns. Am I being clear? Because I'm probably not.

Well, I responded to a previous question on that point, I think, as to whether or not it'd be an analysis of all ADU law, which would take more than just a couple weeks. What I would focus the attention on would be on this appeal and the issues that this appeal presents and the comments that I've heard from the council that were expressed tonight. And so that we could then present to you the two resolutions for you to consider that discussion at that point. I have a

So I've talked a lot tonight about drawing the line on this side of this appeal. I would be willing to draw the line on the other side of the appeal if the council is willing to make a statement that the ADU factory is done for the time being. If we can figure out where, if we're willing to, if we are willing to make the policy statement right now, since this is open, to the planning commission that, you know, to staff in the planning commission that, we are going to put a pause on the production of ADUs until such time as the ADU ordinance is passed. Put a pause on ADUs that violate our floor area ratios. So if we're willing to, I would be willing to deny the appeal if the council will take that stand now. And whether it's, I'm not so concerned about, not so concerned about ADUs that are in the pipeline. And we can have a conversation about whether what we think about ADUs that have been applied for. But I am concerned about the 2,800 properties in town, however many it is that don't have ADUs at this point. and making them adhere, requiring them until such time as the ADU ordinance is passed to adhere to the floor area ratios as specified in Title 17.

So what you're saying is taking serious action to use the methods that we talked about tonight to rein in the ADUs in the future. I'm willing to go for that.

Well, I need to interrupt. My suggestion on that would be That the issue that we've just heard Councilmember Barron-Rice be presented to you in July. Okay. My understanding of the law is that until you have a city's ADU ordinance adopted, that the city is governed by the state law on ADU.

But with respect... We have had the conversation that we have been having is about two different aspects of state law. And my position is that we have been deferring to one chapter of the state law rather than deferring to the other chapter of the state law. And I'm willing to take that position.

I guess what I'm saying is I don't know if under the law you can push the pause button on ADUs. So if that is what I'm hearing you suggest, my recommendation is that that issue be included in the research that we bring back to you in July.

Maybe this is a question for Brian, but I'll ask Brandon. Can we, the way that this is agendized here as a hearing on a specific ADU, can we... Could we provide policy direction? I mean, could you informally take policy direction from the comments that you've heard from three of us and go back and change that? That's where I was going to unmute.

I don't think you have agendized this in a way where you can set a firm policy. I was going to suggest the same thing. Let's bring it back in July, and we'll write the agenda title in such a way that you can take action. Anyone who's interested in discussing broader ADU policy than would have an opportunity can be part of that conversation. I don't know. Brian may tell us when you all changed the setback, the way that the city was interpreting the setback policy. the staff just did that. That's true. Yeah. And that's, that's, you know, that's something that happens at a staff level is interpreting the policy. But if the city council is going to set a citywide policy for how the planning commission and all staff and everybody interprets the policy, that would be, that would be my, I think that would be the best way to do it. I, whether that's legally required, that would be a Brian question. But I think that if you're tipping into setting policy, I think it would be nice to have people that are interested in that policy conversation available to come.

So I agree with Brandon. The way that this is agendized, there's no description in the agenda that there's going to be some kind of an action taken by the council tonight with regards to policy. So you can schedule a future agenda item for that discussion. I guess the query would be, do you want to do that as part of this appeal, or would you want that to come back as a future agenda item, as a separate agenda item? My recommendation would be that we limit the analysis as it's relevant legally to this appeal and what the law is, statutory case law is, whatever other source of law there would be out there to find on this, and focus it on the appeal. And then if you wish to have a discussion with regard to a city policy, that that be a separate agenda item. And you can tonight give direction for that to be brought back either in July or at some future meeting. But if you wanted to, you certainly do it in July.

If this appeal was just decided right now based on the grounds, and obviously there's no resolution for this course of action, so I guess it would sort of have to come back, but would you at a staff level basically just interpret that as a de facto policy and how you provide that?

That's a pretty standard practice, yeah. But every case would still sort of be taken on its own merits without there being a formal policy. I mean, if we came back and had a policy conversation, we would write a policy that the council would adopt through a resolution.

So it would be much more formal. But this has to come back anyway. Right.

Unless you want to take the one action that was noticed in the agenda today. Right. So it's going to come back anyway.

Correct.

I just wanted to weigh in. I certainly agree with Brandon and our city attorney. We should not be setting policy tonight. That should be for a future discussion, a future agenda. But I would support doing the continuation until July and getting the legal analysis because Honestly, a lot of material came in late this morning, and it was just not only too much to read, but to process and to make these kind of decisions. I think we would all benefit, and the public could benefit as well from us having that legal analysis on both sides of this. Certainly then we can make our decision. So could I make a motion to continue this item to July?

Could I request, and you can certainly say no to this, but could I request a date uncertain rather than July in case we need more time? We'll notice it. So that's the only reason for a date certain is then you don't necessarily have to notice it, but we would notice it anyway. So we'll shoot for July unless the council really wants it back in July, then tell us July.

It could be a matter of the timing on how long it takes to do this research. I mean, This is obviously a very complicated area of the law. There's been many state statutes, housing laws, and ADU laws, and the rest. And there may be multiple court cases. I just don't know, as I sit here at this moment. If you say July, we could just continue it, too. We could tell you we don't have the time. I agree with Brandon. Make it a date uncertain. If it's done and we're ready, we'll put it on for July.

The policy decision will come back at the same time? The policy discussion will come back at the same time? At the same meeting. I think that's important, yes. Okay, the policy decision, under your motion, the policy discussion would come back at the same meeting.

Okay, so I'd like to make a motion to continue this meeting to a date uncertain and also at that same meeting that we have a policy discussion on the ADUs.

Second.

Council Member Barron?

Yes.

Council Member Booter? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Delves?

Yes.

Who did I say yes to?

Oh, Council Member Dramoff? Yes. Mayor Byrne?

Yes.

Motion carries.

All right, we're breaking for dinner. Sorry for those people who are waiting for the next... Eight o'clock?

Eight o'clock.

Okay, eight o'clock, we'll be back. So we stand at recess until eight o'clock.

I think so. Yeah, we're ready.

We're back in session at 8.01, and we're going, we have another, we have item number 11, and then a closed session following that. Resolution 2026.03.4 is the Consideration of an appeal by Esperanza Carmel Commercial LLC of the Historic Resources Board, April 20th, 2026 decision to support a National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Reimers Stone House Terrace, located at San Carlos Street, two southwest of Seventh Avenue. Council has been presented two options, deny the appeal or grant the appeal. And of course, the council could also come up with a third option that they craft tonight. We received a request at noon today for me to recuse myself due to a donation made by Esperanza over two years ago. I'm gonna ask the city attorney for his opinion on this request.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. Well, I will point out first that this matter involves the nomination that was submitted by Christy Reimers. It's not one that was presented by Esperanza. And the second thing I want to say is I need to ask you a question. And my question is whether you will be able to make your decision this evening based upon the evidence that's presented at this hearing and whether you will be fair and impartial to all parties in these proceedings.

Yes.

Okay, thank you. My opinion is that you do not need to recuse yourself. You do not have any material financial interest. And you have just confirmed that you're going to be fair and impartial to all parties. So my opinion is you do not need to recuse.

All right. Thank you. We'll get going. Catherine's going to make the staff report. Go ahead.

I do have several slides, but it's under 10 minutes. So let's get started.

I didn't give you a time limit.

What's that?

You don't have a time limit.

I'll begin with a brief description of the property, which is developed with two structures, one altered structure dating to circa 1904, which I'll be referring to as the cottage, and one larger building dating to 1977, which contains office, retail, and residential uses. Original property owner, Ruth Milwane, purchased the property in 1904 and likely received help from her brother, an architect, and her father, a contractor, to build the small cottage, which was first depicted on the 1910 Sanborn fire insurance map as a one-story wood frame, L-plan cottage with a porch. By 1930, the cottage had been expanded with a small addition. In the late 1930s, Niels and Christy Ramers purchased the property and resided in the cottage. They constructed an addition and added rock veneer. By 1962, the sandboard map indicates that the building footprint had changed from an L plan to a U plan, and the porch had been enclosed. In 1977, significant local architect Olaf Dahlstrand renovated the cottage to accommodate a bakery and a sandwich shop. His alterations included a one-story east addition with a rooftop patio seen from San Carlos Street. Dahlstrand not only renovated the cottage, he also designed a new separate mixed use building. As shown in these photographs, the 1977 building features a retail unit fronting San Carlos, but also features office and retail units accessed via the courtyard with residential units above. The property also features a driveway leading to tuck under parking at the rear. Pedestrian access into the site is primarily served via a set of stairs leading from San Carlos Street. I'll now discuss why we're here this evening, discussing the Stonehouse Terrace. In March of this year, the Planning Division received a letter from the State Office of Historic Preservation, which I'll call OHP, dated February 26th. The letter notified the city of an active review and comment period for the pending Raymer Stonehouse Terrace National Register nomination, which was agendized for review by the State Historical Resources Commission on May 7th. The state's letter requested comments from both planning staff and from the HRB. The nomination, which was sponsored by one of the property owners, Ms. Christy Ramers, was authored by Ms. Barbara Lamprecht, a qualified architectural historian. Ms. Lamprecht concludes the property is eligible for listing on the National Register under Criterion C for its architecture and as an excellent example of master architect Dahlstrand's work. Ms. Lamprecht cites two periods of significance for the property, 1910, which is the date we first see the cottage on a Sanborn map, and 1977, so inclusive of both buildings on the site. And Ms. Lamprecht additionally finds that the property's contribution to Carmel's history, architecture, and culture has the necessary exceptional significance to meet criterion consideration G, properties that have achieved significance within the last 50 years. Prior to receipt of the state's letter, the city had not previously evaluated the property for potential historic significance. So to facilitate review of the nomination by both planning staff and by the HRB, the city retained the services of a contracted qualified architectural historian, Ms. Margaret Clovis. Ms. Clovis prepared an intensive survey permitted by the municipal code, quote, as initiated by the department. Her survey concluded that the 1977 building appears to be significant as a good example of organic style architecture by local architect Dahlstrand. Yet, it's ineligible for listing at this time due to the fact it has not yet reached 50 years old and it doesn't appear to be of exceptional importance as required. Upon receipt of that evaluation, staff prepared a determination of ineligibility for listing on the Carmel inventory with a custom expiration date aligning with the 50 year of age mark, October 21st, 2027, and agendized it for consideration by the HRB alongside consideration of the National Register nomination. On April 20th, the HRB did not issue the determination of ineligibility. The HRB passed a motion, 3-0, to, quote, recommend the Stonehouse building go on the National Registry, and we support the application and the report by Barbara Lamprecht. Prior to the motion, board members provided comments supporting the nomination, summarized as follows. Olaf Dahlstrand, a master architect and prominent civic leader who served on the Carmel Planning Commission and the City Council, created an outstanding, forward-thinking, adaptive reuse design for the Ramers, a longtime Carmel family since the 1920s, by integrating old and new to combine retail, office, and living space around a central landscape courtyard, a typology specific to Carmel. Planning staff relayed these comments alongside staff comments, which were based on the city's consultant to the state for inclusion in the May 7th State Historical Resources Commission packet. The state reviews and recommends nominated properties to the keeper of the National Register, and then the keeper has 45 days to determine listing on the National Register. Ultimately, due to incomplete noticing, the state pulled this item from their May agenda. Presumably it will be agendized for consideration at their next quarterly meeting in August. Following the HRB meeting, Ms. Clovis prepared a memo, which responded to the HRB's request for additional information and reaffirmed her independent conclusion that the property is not eligible for listing, either on local, state, or national registries at this time. The key points in her memo are as follows. The nomination does not contain sufficient analysis to determine exceptional significance as required for a property less than 50 years old. Specifically, it doesn't contain comparative context against other mixed-use properties with courtyards. Additionally, while Dahlstrand is featured in scholarly academic publications, this particular property was not documented in published sources, as you might expect of an exceptional development. And there is some question of whether Dahlstrand rises beyond significant architect status to master architect status. Ms. Clovis also takes issue with the inclusion of the altered cottage in the proposed period of significance. And lastly, there is a lack of precedent to add properties to the Carmel inventory prior to 50 years based on an assessment of exceptional importance. It is not unheard of to have qualified architectural historians reaching different conclusions. While Ms. Clovis and Ms. Lamprecht agree the property appears significant for its organic style and for association with Dahlstrand, they differ on the proposed period of significance and most importantly, whether it's exceptionally significant to merit early listing. This slide features the eligibility criteria for listing on the Carmel inventory. Criteria A and B are met, and note C, which states that listed resource should be a minimum of 50 years, but may be eligible if they are exceptionally important. Also note D, and the associated criterion three text there in the red box, it's satisfied because the property appears to be a good example of a type. And here's a breakdown of that criterion three language. And you'll notice that a property doesn't need to meet each of these three sub criteria parts. Use of the word or indicates it only needs to meet one. Ms. Clovis found that this property meets parts A and B, but not C. In any case, Ms. Clovis and Ms. Lamprecht both agree that the larger El Plan 1977 building is significant. However, Ms. Clovis asserts that the cottage should be excluded from the period of significance. A historic designation will always apply to the whole property, as designations are not building by building specific. However, the specification of a period of significance can help identify what's significant on the property. And Ms. Clovis found that the cottage, while old and charming, has lost integrity due to extensive alterations over the years. As I described in 1910, we know that it was a one-story wood cottage. Several additions have been constructed and stone veneer was added. While Dahlstrand was the last to touch the building and is credited with a distinctive front volume with the roof terrace and north windows, he inherited an already altered design and he altered it further. It is neither a good example of Dahlstrand's work nor an example of a certain style or era. And to note, the HRB disagreed with Ms. Clovis and the HRB found the cottage to be significant. This slide lists the character defining features list identified by Ms. Clovis and note that the cottage is excluded. Dahlstrand is undeniably a local significant architect. He's included in the city's historic context statement and his archival documents are stored at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design. Recently, Dahlstrand's 1966 Carmel Valley Shopping Center was evaluated by the County of Monterey. Similar to this situation, there were multiple historians with different findings as to whether the property was historic. Ultimately, the county rejected the potential historic designation in 2022. This slide shows a few of Dahlstrand's local designs, including the altered plaza, the Wells Fargo Bank, the now Park Branch Library, and Nielsen's Market. And these images reflect a few other prominent organic style designs. You can see they feature dramatic roof forms, natural materials, and a careful setting within the surrounding landscape. If a property retains integrity of these seven features, location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association, then it can convey its historic significance. Ms. Clovis and Ms. Lamprecht both agree the property retains overall integrity, despite their different assessments of the significance of the cottage. So cottage aside, the larger property has undergone some degree of alteration since 1977. The roof has been replaced, the entry stairs remodeled with new concrete, stone planters, and metal handrails, and an ADA lift was added to the south elevation in 2012. Nonetheless, overall integrity appears to be maintained. Because this property is not quite 50 years old, I wanted to share a bit how we determined the construction date. The Monterey County Assessor cites 1978. However, we were able to find a reference in the digitized property file attributing the final construction date as October 21st, 1977. It's very important to acknowledge that the 50 year rule is not hard and fast. As stated in the general plan, decision makers have the discretion and the ability based on the recommendation of a qualified professional to determine that resources less than 50 years old are historic. The general plan also states that properties not yet surveyed shall be evaluated on a case-by-case basis as the need arises. And the planning division determined upon receipt of the state's letter that this was a situation that merited an evaluation of the property. The municipal code and the national register both speak to the 50-year threshold. They both include the precise requirement that a property be of exceptional importance to merit listing before 50 years of age. We do have one local property, the Northern California Savings and Loan Building, which was evaluated prior to 50 years of age. The HRB voted to add the property to the inventory. However, the board's decision was appealed to the council. And in 2020, the council made the determination that the 1972 property did not yet qualify for listing. And the council issued a determination of ineligibility with a custom expiration date to align with the 50 year mark. Ms. Clovis's memo does speak to the precedent of listing properties on the Carmel inventory prior to 50 years of age. The inventory does contain a handful of residential properties that were recorded prior to their 50 year date. These properties were surveyed and documented in 2001, prior to the adoption of our 2004 historic preservation ordinance, which contains the requirement of exceptional importance for properties less than 50 years old. The documentation forms do not include an analysis of exceptional importance. So it would have to be inferred that the city found them to be exceptional. When the properties were surveyed and documented in 2001, the city ultimately didn't record them with the county recorder until 2005, 2006, 2007. For additional context, there are nearly 400 properties currently listed on the city's inventory. Four of these are listed on the National Register, the Carmel Mission, Flanders Mansion, Sunset Center, and the Frank Lloyd Wright House. This is not to say that other properties aren't worthy of listing, this is simply the current list. The Tor House, just outside city limits, is also listed on the National Register. I'll note that the city's historic preservation ordinance is very strong. If a property is listed locally, then a national listing is honorary, and it doesn't secure extra protections. So now moving on to the appeal submitted by Esperanza Carmel Commercial. The appellant is appealing the action taken by the Historic Resources Board on April 20th, specifically the board's support of the nomination. And there are five appeal claims. Staff finds that the claims do not have merit. And I'll go through them one by one. Claim A asserts that the HRB lacks authority to send a support letter. However, the code identifies the board's power to, quote, administer the historic preservation program pursuant to the historic preservation ordinance chapter. This chapter states that, quote, participating in federal and state preservation processes and programs, end quote, is one of the purposes of the historic preservation ordinance. And the state's letter expressly requested comments from the board and from staff. Claim B asserts that the property is ineligible for consideration. However, the property is eligible for consideration. The code gives the planning department authority to initiate evaluations, and while eligible resources should be 50 years, they're not required to be. Claim C speaks to the HRB's limited authority, which does not extend to state bodies, as I already mentioned. the board is tasked with participating in federal and state preservation processes. Claim D speaks to the appellants pending discretionary applications and CEQA and restates that the HRB exceeded their authority. However, the HRB did have authority to support the nomination. The HRB did not consider nor comment on the appellant's pending development applications. And pursuant to CEQA guidelines, environmental review shall commence once a discretionary project is deemed complete. And prior to approving the project, the decision-making body shall either find the project categorically or statutorily exempt. They should adopt a negative declaration or mitigated declaration or certify a final environmental impact report. So that is the secret process. Claim E speaks to deficient public notice requirements. This item was fully noticed as required with publication in the pine cone and hand delivery to all occupants within 100 feet and mailed to all property owners within 300 feet. The city received a number of public comments on this item, both when the item was heard by the HRB and in association with tonight's hearing. I'm sure we'll discuss them tonight. And this slide speaks to the fiscal impact of this project and the environmental review determination. And finally, these are the council options on this de novo hearing. The first option here is to deny the appeal. The appellant's claims focus on the powers of the HRB and how comments to the state are speculative and potentially affect a pending discretionary permit application. However, staff reviewed the appellant's contentions and found that their claims have no merit. However, this hearing on the appeal is de novo. Should the counsel receive public testimony that provides sufficient evidence that the appellant's claims do have merit, the second option is to grant the appeal. Whether or not the council finds the appeal to have merit or not, the state has requested comments from the city on the pending National Register nomination, so the council may opt to send supportive comments, comments of objection, or take a neutral position. Additionally, the council may issue a determination of ineligibility as part of either action on the appeal. The council is not limited to these options, and although not specifically recommended by staff, if the council finds the Raymer Stonehouse Terrace is potentially exceptional, council could direct staff to contract with another qualified professional to reassess the eligibility for listing on the Carmel inventory and remand the action back to the HRB. That concludes my presentation. Thank you.

Thank you, Catherine. All right. Questions from the council? Let's go ahead.

Catherine, thank you for that. I know it's been a lot of hard work, so thank you for doing that. The question that I have is I'd like to just clarify the differences, if any, between the local below 50 standard and the national registers below 50 standard. Both speak to exceptional importance, but is the local standard actually meant to be the exact same standard as the National Register, or are there, in your mind, subtle differences?

I did not pick up on subtle differences. There's unfortunately not a lot of guidance on how to interpret exceptional significance. It's a subjective determination.

And I'll just... What I was picking up was that... The code has obviously the language about exceptional importance to the city, state, or nation based on unusually strong contribution to history, architecture, engineering, or culture. And so that's sort of like on its face. I didn't know if there was anything beyond that definition. I think the reason I'm asking was because you're trying to synthesize all these documents and try to pick up on, read between the lines a little bit on what are the rules of interpretation for the National Register in her second memo. I'll call it like the rebuttal memo, if you will, from Meg Clovis. She starts talking about... She starts talking about National Registered Bulletins 15 and 22. And basically, she says the first step is to evaluate the property within an adequately developed historic context. And then she says the second step in establishing exceptional importance is to compare the property to related properties of the same type. and she goes on to say National Register guidance requires identifying which properties best represent the defined historic context, which I read as saying there's guidance in apparently National Register Bulletin 15 that says this property, there needs to be an analysis of these different properties of this you know, of this, of related properties and that this one needs to sort of rise, if not to the top, then among the top. Are these same things that I'm describing, that I just described in Meg Clovis's rebuttal, this sort of decision-making framework, do those apply to the local Carmel inventory test as well?

Well, not explicitly stated in our local code, I would argue that in order to determine if it's exceptionally significant, we would need to go through those steps of establishing the context, say, mixed-use commercial properties in Carmel that feature a courtyard, and then do a study of all of those properties and see how they compare.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I mean, obviously, there's a lot, clearly, a lot of the language was just drawn, it appears to be, from the from the National Register language, like exceptional importance, and then some of the other criteria seem to very much align. So anyway, that's helpful. Thank you. Appreciate that.

Alessandra?

I just have a quick just confirmation from our city attorney. So the state actually already has the HRB comments because the city on April 30th sent a letter relaying what happened on the April 20th HRB meeting. So those comments are already there, correct?

Yeah, that's correct. There's nothing that you would do tonight that would erase those comments. Those comments are now on record with the state, as you pointed out. However, under your option two, there's a number of... action items for you, if you will, granting the appeal, providing comments to the state, and then making a decision, if you choose to, on the determination of ineligibility. So if you choose to make comments, those comments would then be transmitted by staff to the state, along with a letter, which would explain council considered it, took action, and here's their comments.

I think just a second point of clarification, if I might. So staff did send the initial letter to the state saying, here's the decision, here's the words of the HRP. However, at the end, I think staff put a little proviso that said, the appeal period isn't over yet. We'll let you know, basically. Then there was an appeal filed. Then we sent a secondary letter that said there was an appeal filed. Therefore, the city has no official opinion. So while it is true that they do have the words, they also were made aware that the city had no official opinion until this body made a decision.

Okay, but I'm just confirming that it is part of the record already, like the attorney said, that you're not, you can't erase what's already been said.

Other than the second letter that said the city has no official opinion at this point until the city council makes a decision.

Okay, thanks for the clarification. And one more clarification. We included the option to provide comments in both resolutions. whatever those comments may be, if you wish to make them.

Do you have any questions, Bob? Yeah, just following up on Alessandra's question. So does the state already have, so staff and the HRB had differing opinions. Does the state already have both of those?

Yes.

Okay, so essentially any documentation that existed prior to the Planning Commission is with, the state has already seen it, or has it, whether they've looked at it.

Sorry, the Planning Commission?

Sorry, HRB, yeah.

Yes, and I believe it was one of the attachments the state received both, because they asked for both staff comments and HRB comments, the letter contained both.

Thank you. Jeff?

Thank you. So when I look up here at these two resolutions, the only difference I see, you know, so between one and two, the first one, so the first clause is the same. Clause one is the same. The second clause is deny in the first one, grant in the second one. The third clause is provide comments on the pending application, right? But that's what the appeal is about. correct, the appeal is about the letter that was sent to the state. And then the fourth clause, which is the same, which what you're recommending is to issue a determination of ineligibility. So it doesn't really matter under either of these options whether we deny the appeal or grant the appeal. What you've listed here is basically the same. We can deny the appeal or grant the appeal. I'm sort of reading between the lines. What really matters in the case of this, like what's up here on the screen, are the third and fourth things. Provide comments on the pending application, which we may or may not do.

And then issue the determination of ineligibility, which we may or may not do. So whether we grant or deny the appeal, we sort of have the same range.

Are you so appreciative of all the options I gave you?

Seems like there are two, number three and number four. Okay, thank you.

Hitchhiking on Hans's question, did we or anyone else do an analysis comparing to other properties that are similar in Carmel?

No.

So that has never been done?

No, our historic context statement doesn't do a deep dive on specifically mixed-use properties developed in the city over decades that also feature a landscaping component. The planning division felt that it wasn't an appropriate use of funds at this time to do such a study, simply acknowledging that there are many.

Yes, that's the question later. So given that, didn't you say that that's a requirement in order to meet the national standard?

Ms. Clovis asserts that yes, that study needs to be done and staff concurs.

Okay, and did you study why the county turned down the Safeway Shopping Center?

I don't want to speak to it definitively, but it was a question of, I believe there were aspects of does it retain integrity? Is this a great example of Dahlstrand's work? But I don't want to speak to it definitively.

Any comment about Dahlstrand himself in terms of master architect?

Ms. Clovis speaks to that in her memo, yes.

That he wasn't?

There were mixed opinions.

Okay, good. So is it normal that different people the consultant that you hired to support your cause rules with the cause that you're paying them to roll on? Is that normal? Do you see this all the time? In other words, you could go find a consultant to say what you want to say.

I really can't say.

So we could get... Yeah, I don't think, Mayor, I think that's not really for us to say. I know, I'm just...

It's just... Okay. What's the normal, is it normal for someone to go to the state first before they go here? Did they go to us first, I guess? Wouldn't they normally come and ask for an opinion from the planning director first?

Yes, the city, the planning department receives applications on a weekly basis, historic evaluation applications. Typically it's either in advance of maybe a property changing hands. They want to know is this property historic to determine if there's any additional layer of review that would affect a project. More often it's folks who are about to do a project and it's a requirement. We need to determine is the property historic or not before processing a project application. So this is a unique situation where we had an applicant go to the state, but that is permitted. It's not a requirement to apply to the city first, but it is a little atypical.

So the original applicant... Did not go to the Planning Commission to file a local judgment first?

Okay.

Has that been done yet?

No.

Okay. All right. I reserved the right to ask questions later, but let's move on with getting some. Can I ask just one more? Absolutely.

Kind of piggybacking on... some of the things that Dale was talking about. Did Ms. Clovis, I guess, how would you characterize it? I mean, I've obviously read it, but would you say that Ms. Clovis is saying that the property is not of exceptional importance or just that the applicant has not done the analysis to prove that it's of exceptional importance?

I would say both.

You would say both?

I would say that the city's historian is comfortable saying at this time, it's not yet 50 years old, she's not seeing the exceptional significance argument, and that we haven't been shown it either.

But there's a difference between, and maybe this is a distinction without a difference, but it seems like there's a difference between saying something is... not of exceptional importance and saying that you just haven't proven of exceptional importance, I guess.

We did not give our consultant a budget. So she was not constrained by, you know, she didn't run out of time, like didn't have time to include a context of other mixed use landscape properties in town. I believe if she felt that was important to substantiate an argument, that it is exceptionally important, she would have included that. Even a brief one.

I think a way to say it, because you're right, they're close. But I think the best way to say it probably is based on all the information that our consultant had, that was her determination. Now, if there was new information that was presented, but like Catherine said, we didn't put any boundaries on our consultant. We didn't say you can only work for four hours on this. So everything that she was able to find and was presented with led her to that conclusion. But we've seen this before in other cases. If new information comes to light, we always look at that and evaluate it and discuss that with our consultant.

So you, just to put a fine point on it, you read Ms. Clovis' analysis as saying the property is not of exceptional importance. That's right.

It's like full stop.

That's right.

Can I ask? Yeah. So Clovis decided that the, Clovis made, went down the path of trying to figure out its historicity and all that. At some point decided that and these are my words not her words the property is not going to be exceptionally Important not going to be deemed to have exceptional importance. So rather than going down that path she just stopped her investigation and If she had decided that, in her opinion, if she had decided that it was possibly exceptionally important, she had the sort of go-ahead from the city to travel down that path if she had wanted to.

Yes, she had the go-ahead. She's also been working for the city for many, many years. So she is familiar with the resources in our town. And I do believe if she felt there was merit of doing an extensive, exhaustive, comparative analysis to different property types, both mixed-use commercial properties with landscaping or properties in the 70s, she would have done so.

Based on her underlying knowledge of what's around town. Okay.

Okay. Anybody else?

Okay, thank you.

All right, so we start with the appellant first, I've learned earlier. You'll have 10 minutes, and I'll give you five minutes for rebuttal if you need it later. How many people are going to be speaking in your group? Me and Dana.

Okay, we'll put the time up and you can split it or use it however you want. Good evening, my name is Paul Lopez. I work with EMC Planning here in Monterey. and represented the Esperanza Carmel Commercial Group here on the appeal. I would like to comment that that was an excellent presentation Catherine put together. One critical item that she talked about, and I realize that this is a rather mundane and difficult task to figure out the difference between starting with the state, I'm a state expert, then it's Carmel, then Carmel expert, and then the two experts disagreeing, the one expert for the state saying that they believe that A, the building was exceptional and could beat the 50-year time limit, and B, that the architect was exceptional. So we'll get to that in a second. But what I wanted to emphasize this evening is that when the initial Historic Resources Board had the discussion and read the report that was prepared by Ms. Clovis, they determined that the building was ineligible because it wasn't 50 years old. It wasn't an exceptional example, so they weren't going to bring it in under the exception rule. But it would ultimately become a historic resource because the architect was recognized as being significant. And that's important to keep that word in mind, significant. So once that report was done, the HRB went ahead and said, OK, we're going to have a discussion. And they went ahead and produced a letter And the letter was going to be sent to the state, basically saying that we support the idea of this building being named as a historic reset on the state and on the national level. So the state board went ahead and said, OK, we're going to have a meeting and hearing about it. And when the resources board had their hearing on April 20, they used basically two sources of material, the Barbara I forget her last name, Barbara's report for the state and then the Meg Clovis response where she disagreed on one point with respect to the building as being exceptional. So you have those two reports and what came about was that we felt there wasn't significant information bought to either the state or to the local board with respect to the building. So that's why we said that we appeal because we didn't think that they had the authority to send the letter. And the authority being necessarily that you're operating in good faith. They didn't have all the facts. With respect to our idea that the idea that we violated the public notice, we didn't mean to the extent of sending out the notices to the public. We meant to the extent when the hearing was held, the HRB did not provide all of the information that was going to go into the letter. We had anticipated that they would discuss the content of the letter, direct staff to go back and write the letter, bring it back, talk about the letter, and then if anybody had disagreements about it, they could have discussed it at the time before the letter was sent. So as we know from the chronology, that's exactly what happened. the letter was sent on the 29th. So it was nine days after the hearing, a full nine days after the hearing that the letter was crafted. So at the time of the hearing, we were deprived due process that we didn't have an opportunity to review what that letter would have said and how it was being said. And in fact, it did represent to the state that the city was in fact going to put this building into a historic resource once it became old enough in 2027. So it's important to note that those things all took place and that we felt that the letter was sent was in fact persuasive and it was subjective to the extent that the eventuality of the building being named to a historic resource is a future activity. So it was very difficult to understand how that could possibly be done. And as we found with this appeal process, this is a de novo trial, we received information in the staff report that was brand new to this, and that's the update of the Clovis letter. And the Clovis letter went ahead and dismantled some of the arguments that were put into the Barber letter at the state level with respect to the building being an exceptional building. So we appreciate that there's disagreements between the experts. And in that light, the expert on behalf of the, it was in the attorney's letter, here we go, she justified her rationale for why it was considered of exceptional importance. And I'd like to read that because to me it was really amazing. Stonehouse Terrace exemplifies exceptional importance at a local level of significance, humanly scaled. Here, Doshland honors Carmel's heritage, stone, natural materials, without turning to Keech. What that means, I have no idea. He created a welcoming space where buildings, material, artscape, landscape are unified, yet spirited. I don't really know how a building could be spirited or unified. I mean, it's put together. It's there. So again, it's language that seems very odd. With sensitivity of surrounding context, but without condensation. How does a building condensate somebody? The architect introduced interpretation of modernism in a major urban street, helping together the Reimerstown house, which had been a stable and familiar anchor and terminal by the sea. I don't really consider San Carlos as being a major urban street. So the context, again, the context is important. So if nothing, for another reason, it would be important to expand on what exactly this statement means is why the building's exceptional. This information all came about after the fact. The letter that was done by Ms. Clovis was done in, I think it was the 29th, 21st, anyway. It was done after the hearing, which was in April 20th. So again, the information that is now provided raised one particular issue that has tremendous impact on the credibility of both reports. And that is that the state's expert had actually testified and wrote a report and testified before Monterey County in 2022 about a building that was involved, that Dahlstrand was involved with, where she had made it very clear that he was not considered an exceptional or master architect. So four years later, five years later, she's turned around and saying, well, now he is the master architect. And that master architect, designation is one of the key items for both the state and the Carmel to look at and decide, yes, we're going to make that building, we'll make that building historic. So with that, I find that both reports, both from Barbara and both from Meg, neither one of them mentioned that fact. And the fact is that they had testified about the building and about the quality of the architect, and that didn't make its way into either one of the two reports. So to that extent, the information that was provided both to the state level and in the letter from the city to the state, both were woefully inadequate and they dropped the ball in terms of what the analysis should have been in order for the boards to make an accurate decision one way or the other about the stature of the architect and the quality of the building. So I bear in mind that we think that both of those reports actually violate common sense and the idea that you're creating full disclosure within the experts reports. We think both of those reports should be vitiated. Meg Clovis discussed all the items that were missing from the report and so it's clear that the analysis by either one of the state or the local historical experts didn't adequately address these buildings or these issues with respect to the mastery of the architect. So with that I'm going to take a break. and let our architect historian come in and talk a little bit more.

At this point, you're probably going to be eating into your rebuttal time. Are you okay with that? Pardon? You're going to be eating into your rebuttal time. Is that okay? Sure. Okay. Go ahead. Keep track of it. Good evening. Nova, keep track of that.

Mr. Mayor, council members, my name is Dana Sopernowitz. I have been active in historic preservation for 40 years or more. And just a little background, I live in Pebble Beach. I grew up in the Monterey Peninsula when I was young and so forth and came to Carmel. So I have a familiarity with the city. I've worked for the State Historic Preservation Office for two years. I was a principal reviewer, staff reviewer, so I had the opportunity to review hundreds of projects for various agencies throughout the state of California for two years. I also worked for the California Department of Transportation for almost 20 years, and I was a staff reviewer. revealing projects along the highway system throughout the whole state of California. I've completed hundreds of eligibility determinations, and I've done a number of National Register nominations. So that's a little bit background of my work. And I've been working in this area for the last 15 years, and even before that I was involved with projects in Monterey County. I think the big question, there are a number of issues, but one of the big issues is the inconsistency of how that property was described by the original owner. individual who created the National Register nomination, Mr. Landbrook. And I want to kind of go over some of those because those are really critical.

You have a little over four minutes.

Okay. Those are very critical to understanding where we're at in terms of the exceptional significance question, which is paramount here. So the National Register criterion G is the source for exceptional significance, and the National Register is pretty descriptive about what that means. And it really talks about a building that is not only exceptional, it may be the best. in a community. And there are very few buildings that ever go through the National Register, let alone a community, because I've done hundreds, that come out to be exceptional. It's just something that's pretty rare, and it really takes a lot of effort and research to pose that argument. It's got to be an argument based on research. It has to be an argument based on comparative analysis. It has to be an argument based upon the architecture of the building. And then it has to be an argument based on integrity. One of the biggest problems with this property is that half of the property is the Reimers house. It was a cottage and it was a modest cottage. It was set back and it was basically remodeled. So The cottage itself, the residence is not necessarily unique to Dahlstrom. Dahlstrom was working with the building that had already been modified and altered over the years up to 1962. And what's happened today when we went out to visit the property, it's pretty apparent that you have a large addition on the front. You have a balcony. They've created sort of a second floor. And then if you look at the back of the building, they punched that out. and then the building's been raised or at least dug out to create a lower floor. Those are major changes. I doubt whether a property came to you or came to the HRB and was brought up and they said, excuse me, but, you know, the building's been enlarged twice. We've done an addition here. We pushed out the back. It's two stories or they dug underneath it that that would be acceptable even at the eligibility level, the lowest level, let alone at the highest level. If the assertion is that the original building, which has been corrupted over the years, is not part of the significance statement that was made by Lambrick because it lacks integrity, then what do you have left? You have the 1977 Dahlstrom building, which is unique to Dahlstrom. The issue there is that Dahlstrom was pretty ambitious. I've reviewed at least 70 projects he did, and he probably did a lot more than that. You know, Carmel, Pebble Beach, residential properties and so forth. And I think it's, somebody really needs to spend time to determine whether this building, and I'm talking about the 1977 L-shaped building, really merits an exceptional statement of significance, as opposed to, yeah, it's an interesting building, but there are a lot of qualities of that building that are not embellished in other Dahlstrom buildings. You know, a lot of, some of those buildings, residences were very avant-garde. They had, you know, pitch roofs at various different angles and all that. This building, Other than the landscaping, which is very nice, and it's a great restaurant next door, so it's a nice public space, doesn't have a lot of those qualities. And the nomination talked about Frank Lloyd Wright, and I don't really see that it jumps out at you as a Wright type of building. There's a lot of elements of the building look very much 1970s, late 70s, California ranch, you know, the massing of the building, the window configuration. Whether or not it's a nice place to visit, whether or not I think it's fairly attractive is not the issue here. The issue here is whether that building is historically significant. Whether or not enough time has passed that we can say, the HRB could have said, Yes, this building really stands out among all these other wonderful buildings that were built in Carmel in the late 1970s or mid-70s, and some, you know, were less than 50 years, I mean, older than 50 years, that this building really exemplifies that quality of exceptionalism. And I don't think it does. I don't think Meg believed that it does. And I think by including this building, or suggesting that this building is meritorious for exceptional significance. I think it's going to be a real serious precedent that's being set because there are a lot of other properties. Time is marching on in this community from the late 70s, we're talking about the 1980s pretty soon, that people could come along and say, well, this building built in 1980. You know, it looks exceptional to me. Okay, wrap up, please. Yes. So basically.

One more sentence and you're finished.

Okay, basically I'm opposed to the nomination and I think there needs to be a lot more consideration given to whether that building should be exceptionally significant with the city's criteria or any other criteria. Okay, thank you.

All right, next. The applicant.

Hi, my name is Christy Ramers. I would like to have the 10 minutes and five minutes rebuttal time.

Yes, you'll get the same time.

And I have Tom Lippe on Zoom to start, and then Ian Martin's going to present.

Okay.

Okay.

Good evening, members of the City Council. Can you hear me? We can hear you. Thank you. My name is Tom Lippe. I represent Christy Reimers, an owner of the Reimers Stonehouse Terrace and a proponent of the National Register nomination for the building. I've submitted two letters to the Council so far that provide more detail than what I'm going to talk about now, but now I have really three or four brief points to make. And I want to be clear about distinguishing between the relevance of the substantive comments that have been made so far to two different things that are being asked of the council. One is to submit comments to the OHP, state agency, and the other is to issue the determination of ineligibility. And there hasn't been really any discipline applied to whether the substance of the comments goes to one or the other. So I want to start with a procedural point. The city council can't legally issue a determination of ineligibility for the Carmel inventory for this project because planning staff did not follow the procedures that are required by Chapter 7.32 of the Carmel Municipal Code for the city to make that kind of determination. The department can initiate that process, but the code requires that the department issue the determination in the first instance. which then gives the property owner the opportunity to appeal that determination to the HRB within 10 days after the determination is issued. And then following that 10 days, there's up to 60 days for the HRB hearing to take place on that appeal. So that procedure would have provided adequate time for Ms. Reimers to address all of the substantive issues that are being bandied about tonight. and to prepare her case that the property meets the exceptional important criteria for listing on the Carmel inventory. That is not, as you heard, that's not something she applied for. She applied to the state agency for national register listing. So now all of a sudden she's faced with a Carmel inventory question but the procedure that was followed did not give her time to look at all the information, and I find myself surprisingly in agreement with Mr. Lopez on a point that the information needs to be available at the appropriate time in order to address it. It was not. Instead, Ms. Reimers received a notice that the department was presenting the determination to the HRB for adoption only 10 days before the HRB's April 20th hearing. So it's a radically different procedural scenario. Then, only four days before this hearing, the staff report provides notice that the planning department is presenting the same determination to the council for adoption. Again, not enough time to really get into the issue before this council. and a new report from Ms. Clovis four days before this hearing criticizing the evidentiary basis for the exceptional importance of the property. So all of that is deeply unfair to Ms. Reimers and violates her right to the procedural due process as a property owner. So I would ask the council to look into the question of why did the planning department feel the need to bring up the local inventory when the issue before the HRB was comments to the state? I find that to be an interesting question. I don't know the answer. So a second procedural point goes to the issue of the comments to the state as opposed to the determination of ineligibility. So the City Council cannot actually substitute its own comments for the HRB's comments to the OHP because the Municipal Code gives the HRB the power to participate in federal and state preservation processes and programs, and the HRB's exercise of that power is not an appealable decision, and I discussed that at some length in my May 29th letter. Don't have time to go into all the section numbers of that, but it's there in front of you if you want to look at it. So the city council cannot and should not usurp the HRB's role in the National Register nomination process. That said, if the council is intending to inject itself into the communication between the HRB and the state OHP, I want to let the council know that Ms. Lambrecht is amending the National Register nomination that's been submitted and she is going to be looking at the historic context statement and the comparative analysis and doing more work on that for purposes of the National Register nomination. Now that the critique has been provided, it would be the responsible thing to do is to address it in the forum where this nomination is actually being considered. So that's going on. Given that, I think the council should seriously consider, if the council intends to get involved in the communication to the OHP, to remand the matter back to the HRB. There's time now since the National Register hearing won't occur until August at this point. To remand the matter to the HRB to gather all this information that's been kind of coming in in little bits and pieces here over the last few weeks to reconsider their comments to the National Register nomination. And one last point here, this whole issue of whether Olive Dahlstrand is a master architect. If you read Ms. Clovis' critiques of Ms. Lambrecht's analysis, At no point does she contest Ms. Lambrecht's repeated references to Dahlstrand as a master architect. She never criticizes that conclusion. What she does criticize is that Ms. Lambrecht changed her opinion from 2022 to 2026. I think you now have two letters from Ms. Lambrecht explaining why she changed her opinion as she learned more and looked into more scholarship that has been done on Mr. Dahlstrand. So the fact that she changed her opinion is somewhat interesting, but not really that interesting. What is most interesting is that when Lambrecht calls him a master architect throughout the National Register nomination, Ms. Clovis' critique of that literature, that nomination writing, doesn't take issue with describing Mr. Dahlstrand as a master architect.

And I'm not sure how much time I have left.

If I could ask for a time check, that would be helpful. Eight minutes, just over eight minutes.

I've used eight minutes or I have eight minutes?

You have eight minutes left.

Okay, so I've only used two.

And that's going to use up all your rebuttal time as well. You've used seven minutes. You've used seven minutes, sir. Yeah, we gave you 15 minutes. Gotcha.

Thank you. So I'm finished. Thank you.

Okay. All right. So why don't you pause for while he's coming up. Thank you.

Yeah, let's turn the slides on. Thank you. And Mr. Mayor, thank you for your flexibility in these proceedings. They're much appreciated, and I know as much as you want to go home, you'd rather hear about Ulf Dahlstrand. Well, you're in luck.

We can't wait.

What's that?

We can't wait.

OK, terrific. Well, my name is Ian Martin. I've been studying the architecture of Ulf Dahlstrand ever since I was on the Planning Commission 10 years ago. It's an honor to defend his legacy. I'm not going to get down in the weeds about the National Register process. Instead, I'm going to stay big picture about why the Historic Resources Board was correct in its decision to recommend it and why City Council should join them in it. Dr. Barbara Lamprecht, the historian nominating Stonehouse Terrace, did indeed say Dahlstrand was not a master architect four years ago. Four years later, she does now. You can learn a lot in four years, and people's positions change and evolve. Dr. Lamprecht has an excellent track record for getting worthy properties on the National Register. She's had 11 successful applications to the National Register, 11. She is an expert in this process and believes that our chances of prevailing are excellent. She believes we will succeed due to the excellence of the Stonehouse Terrace and the importance of architect Olaf Dahlstrand. Pierluigi Serrano is an internationally recognized architectural historian who has authored or co-authored 22 books on architecture. He interviewed Dahlstrand and has lectured about him. He says, Olaf Dahlstrand was a major design force in the formation of the modernist tradition in Northern California. As a regional master, he authored works expressing a lasting connection between site and architectural expression. And I'll add that the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design holds Dahlstrand's papers. This confirms he is an architect of major importance. Only the work of California's most important architects are archived there. He and his works are also important to the history of our village, and Dahlstrand is mentioned in Carmel by the Sea's historic context statement 23 times. Next slide. Our downtown courtyards are hallmarks of Carmel, and no other building incorporates them better than Stonehouse Terrace. It is a prime example of how to create an outdoor space that inspires pedestrian exploration and discovery. Its genius also lies in part by the way that Dahlstrand took the original stone house and enlarged it and remodeled it and then elegantly framed it with a completely new building that wraps around it, creating a courtyard in the process. Emerging old and new in this fashion, it is an exemplar of how to honor our past while not being frozen in it. The city council's consultant obviously still misunderstands how heavily Dahlstrand modified the stone house, making it his own and a central element of his design. Let's see. The entire building, old and new, represents Dahlstrand's unique creativity. Make no mistake, the period of significance for the entire property is 1977. And if you watch the HRB discussion, you will see they agree. Let's see. Doctors Lamprec and Serrano are both impressive figures in their field. They do not lightly give their names and reputations to just any old building. I could go on about their credentials. Instead, I want to tell you about two other experts on the history of Carmel architecture, and there isn't an expert out there who knows more about the subject than they do. Eric Dyer and Catherine Gualtieri don't need any outside historians or consultants to tell them who Olaf Dahlstrand was and what his contributions were to Carmel's built environment. They have served on the Historic Resources Board for something like 20 years each, closely studying the buildings that make up our village and the architects who designed them. Having a consultant tell them about Dahlstrand is a little like telling a curator at Monticello who Thomas Jefferson was. Catherine Gualtieri is a modest person, and few people in the village are aware of her impressive credentials as a historian. I'll share one salient example. In 1985, Governor George Duke Majan appointed her as State Historic Preservation Officer putting her in charge of the State of California Office of Historic Preservation. Under her supervision, the office reviewed well over a hundred applications for the National Register, calling the unworthy ones and forwarding on the best to Washington DC for the National Register. It was her signature that nominated our Flanders mansion to the National Register on behalf of the State of California. Whoops, what happened? Catherine Gualtieri knows what the National Register process requires because for six years she ran the process for the state of California. So when Catherine Gualtieri and Eric Dyer say that a Carmel building is historically important and worthy of recognition, we should all pay attention. So please, don't declare the building ineligible for the local register that just further complicates a consideration that is already way more complicated than it ever needed to be and is most appropriately handled at the HRB level anyway. And please, endorse the HRB's recommendation. Having buildings on the national register is a point of civic pride. and adds prestige to our village. So in closing, I ask you all to double down and join the HRB in giving Stonehouse Terrace your hearty recommendation for inclusion on the National Register. Thank you all.

Thank you. Any other speakers or you want to save your time? Okay, so you got two and a half minutes left. All right. Now... Anybody else like to have anything to say? Public comment? Public comment. How many people are going to comment, by the way, since it is 9 to 10? Not that many, huh? Four? Raise your hand if you're going to speak. I'm going to keep track. So there's four? Four. Okay, good.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, and city staff. My name is Cindy Lloyd. Given the excellent letters from Julie Wendt, a former Carmel Planning Commissioner and former member of the HRB, and environmental attorney Thomas Lippe, who analyzed and rebutted the appeal's claims, plus Ian Martin's letter with factual evidence demonstrating that houses younger than 50 years old had been determined to be historic and placed on our local registry. I prefer to refrain from making any more of your precious time by reiterating what was stated in those letters. We who live in and love Carmel should be defending our historic properties, preserving them for future generations. As a certified local government, the HRB is our voice, working in partnership with the State Office of Historic Preservation and the National Park Service to promote historic preservation in Carmel-by-the-Sea. I urge you to deny Esperanza's appeal based on factual evidence The HRB did what the State Historic Resources Board asked it to do. It reviewed the Remers Stonehouse Terrace application to the National Register and responded with comments. Those comments were supportive of the application. I ask you to support our Historic Resources Board by denying the appeal. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, number two. Mike, you want to come up?

Members of the Council, Mayor, my name is Mike Brown, and I'd just like to say that the HRB got it right. This is Carmel's opportunity to honor Olof. I personally had the honor of knowing the gentleman and knew him for a number of years. In fact, I sat where you are, Jeff, and Olof sat right there where Brandon is. This is a gentleman who was so easy to come to and talk to and approach anything about Carmel. He loved Carmel. And I think that's kind of reflected in a lot of me. Look at the bank, Wells Fargo Bank, the tariffs, all these different structures and the uniqueness of them. Well, I look at this appeal as small inference and fails to see the big picture of honoring one of Carmel's greats, the city of Carmel's greats and the environs. I'll cut this short because I have an hour and a half speech, and I don't think you guys want to hear it. So thank you for your time.

Thank you for cutting it short. Okay, who's next? Number three. Come on up.

Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council. My name's Arlene Ichien. I'm a retired attorney. And I would just like to make two points based on the excellent submittals that were made in this proceeding. The first has to do with the determination of ineligibility. It's a determination that the City Council doesn't have the authority to make this evening, principally because the procedures were not followed for arriving at such a decision. And secondly, the HRB's quote-unquote decision to send or to oppose comments I'm sorry, to send comments to the State Historic Preservation Office. That does not qualify as a quote unquote decision under the municipal code section that was cited. And the reason is that section applies principally to, in effect, final decisions or decisions that grant an appealable right, something in a process in entitlement, typically is what we think of. And Esperanza's appeal to negate the HRB's comments does not come within the purview of that municode section. And so those are the two main points that help me kind of wrap up all the interesting but somewhat confusing influx of information that has resulted in this evening's proceedings. So, thank you.

Thank you. All right, June. By the way, just, I guess you can see it up there. We've got five hands up.

I'll keep it short. It's getting late. I'll summarize my points. It's been discussed earlier regarding Meg Glovis' letter It's interesting why a historian will submit a report on the same architect where she's saying that Mr. Darson is not a figure generally recognized greatness in the field. This refers to the Carmel Valley Shopping Center comments she made. His work is not published widely at state or national levels. It did not have an impact on the architectural profession. That's Ms. Lambrecht's words. Then furthermore, she's saying Dahlstrand did not meet the standard of master architect. Then four years later, she comes back. doing another report for the Rivers Stonehouse. He's saying that, states that Dahlstrand was unquestionably a master architect. A little bit conflicting and inconsistent. I think this inconsistency creates this great concern about the reliability of the analysis and master architect designation. It should not be relied upon as a basis of eligibility. There should be further research and studies it should be conducted with Dahlstrand and the Reimers historic building. Also in Meg Kove's letter, she referred to Docomomo. I think it's a non-profit organization that documents and conserve buildings. She did mention that The Allstrans Commercial Building, including the Wells Fargo, is in that record, three of their buildings, but there's no mention of the Stonehouse Terrace. I just want to point that out. It doesn't mean that you're an architect, that all of your projects are significant. I'm an architect. I don't feel like everything I do is always significant. There are times that you're just doing it because you have to do it. In this case, this is one of them, in my belief. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Professor Beach disappeared. OK, I was going to start. Do we have one more? No, no, no, you used your time. We might have questions. We might have questions. We've got Luigi Sereno, special guest.

Go ahead. Thank you so much. Thank you, committee members. Thank you, Mayor. Can you guys all hear me?

We can hear you perfectly.

Thank you so much. First off, I'd like to introduce myself. I know my Last name is a mouthful, and my first name too, Pierluigi Serrano. I'm obviously Italian with a terrible case of California fever, I've been 32 years here. And I am a PhD from UC Berkeley, a California registered architect, a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and I have authored a number of books, largely on mid-century modern architecture. I met Olof in 2003, that same day I met Mark Mills. And Olof said, say hello to Mark, as we've known each other for a long time. Olof was indeed a master architect, a la part with Rowan Mayden. You say, who is Rowan Mayden? Well, everybody knows what Nepenti is, the restaurant, but no one knows who designed it, and that was Rowan Mayden. Well, Maiden is a name that doesn't mean anything to anybody virtually. His archive is lost. But he was a disciple that worked directly with Wright from 1939 to 1941. So the fact that someone does not have a host of publications in no way disqualifies the person from being a master architect. Another case that you guys have in... the area is Kip Stewart. Kip Stewart, I met him, he was extremely shy, did not want to have anyone bug him, but he was the right-hand man of Charles Eames in 1948 in Los Angeles. So, and I know, I've known Barbara for quite some time, and I was involved myself at the time. on the Carmel Valley Shopping Center, and I had a deep disagreement because my position has always been that Olof was a significant contributor to the modernist legacy. There are very few people in the world that have the kind of gravitas of Frank Lloyd Wright And if that is the only standard through which we establish what is the gold standard, then we could practically bulldoze the entire United States of its mid-century legacy. So Carmel and the entire Monterey Bay has a lack of significant studies the way they have been done in Palm Springs. So he has not developed the kind of heritage economy that will come with that. But there is no shortage of extraordinary talents that And the unfortunate thing that has happened is that I've seen time and again in my visits, I live in the Bay Area in Alameda, that I go sometimes to Yankee Point and I see buildings by Anshin and Allen that are gone. Because simply people don't know. So there is value in all of us as a master architect. And it's true that Berkeley screens the archives that are in it. So the fact that there's not a monograph is also because Olof was not interested much in publicity. It was also an exceptional render.

Sir Luigi, if you could wrap it up.

Yes. So one more thing I wanted to say, because I'm also a practicing architect, is that the not all buildings are foreground buildings. Our buildings are supposed to scream attention. In fact, all of design, the Wells Fargo building that was done in 64, this is a building of 77 and a time when architecture was considering preservation and he took ownership of the small cottage. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Your time's up. Thank you. LET'S GO TO LEE. MARCUS.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU. I'VE BEEN LISTENING CAREFULLY AND WATCHING THIS SOMEWHAT FROM AFAR. BUT FIRST OF ALL, I HONESTLY DON'T KNOW HOW YOU GUYS AND GALS IN THE COUNCIL do this week after week after week. I don't know where you're getting your batteries, but I'd sure like to find the source and get a few of those batteries for myself. So congratulations on what is a tireless, ongoing effort on behalf of our city. Sometimes you don't get the credit you deserve.

Appreciate your kind words, Lee. Now what do you have to say about this?

To me, this is about the building and the city. And I believe the process has been flawed. I don't really care about who says what about what, or who says this is right or wrong. But the fact is this building wasn't fully vetted within the context of our city, not even close. And when I look at it, I say, we're comparing this building to the mission to the Clinton Walker House, the Frank Lloyd Wright House, if you will, the Tor House, the Flanders Mansion, Sunset. I mean, frankly, it doesn't take a rocket scientist. Maybe it takes an old busboy to say it just doesn't add up. And I believe the process was incomplete. I believe it was rushed. And I don't think that submitting this and allowing it to go forward without at least at a minimum, a more complete and thorough study is the right thing to do. So I don't see how this thing could be allowed to go forward when there are so many flaws in how we got to where we are today, not blaming anybody. But I sense that there is some political maneuvering that was also involved in this, and that's not right either. It's about what's best for our city, what's best for our community, and the people we serve. And I don't believe it's being done at the highest levels as this project stands right now today. Thank you for your time.

All right. Thank you, Lee. Chris Campbell, go ahead.

Thank you. I'll be very brief, but I don't know why we've spent this... It feels like an interminable time hearing about the merits of Olaf Dahlstrand. This is a simple, simple case, I think, and I'm really baffled as to why we've gotten this far. The HRB simply issued a letter of support which falls well within their right to participate in the federal and state preservation processes. It's not appealable. The code is very clear that you can appeal an approval or a denial of their determination with respect to a project or a property, but this can't be appealed. And the staff has found that all the grounds are unsupported for the appeal and they recommend denial, but then they go on to recommend a determination of ineligibility. But that isn't before you today. It would be a violation of the city's procedure as has been described. I think you should just deny the appeal and let everyone go home. Thank you.

The going home part sounded good. But we're going to do our job. Tim and Nancy Toomey, I'm not sure which one we have, but you're the last hand up, I think.

Can you hear us?

We can.

Okay, good. So actually I'd like to first start by representing Graham Robertson and he would like to make a simple statement of he supports the denial of this appeal. Then I will switch over to my hat as a resident and I too request that you honor the recommendation that was made by the HRB, the lower organization, and I would just offer reinforcements of some statements already made, just that between Catherine Guglieri, Barbara Lambert, and now Pierluigi Sciuriano, we have the other additional expert validations that would honor and support the original position taken by the HRB inside their authority and responsibility. So want to wrap up with let's deny this appeal. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Professor Beach. put her hand up after she took it down, but I'm going to let her, I had cut it to just the five that were there, but go ahead, Victoria. I'm going to let you speed. You get to go last. It worked.

I'm just waiting. I wanted Brandon to, he said he was going to put something up on the screen. So I want to wait until he has gotten that there. I appreciate his doing that. And I'm not sure if I can see that when it happens, but maybe you can let me know.

They've got something up here. Is that what she wants? Okay. We've got an eligibility criteria for Carmel inventory on the screen.

Wonderful. Okay. So I can't see it, but I can see it on my own screen. I wanted to say I find myself in a strange position. First of all, we're talking about resumes a lot tonight, and I know I can't compete with Mr. Seriani, but I can compete, I think, possibly with Caltrans, having taught architectural history to Harvard students for many years. So that's the hat I'm wearing right now. I found myself in a strange position of agreeing with almost everything everyone said on all sides of the issues because almost everybody said what the HRB said, which is that the context of this building needs further study. And I don't know why this hasn't been mentioned by staff, but the HRB asked staff to take the Clovis study back to her office, not to double down on her opinion, but to do the research about what the context, the historic context of the Carmel retail typology, what is the history of that? And if you look at the screen there, you'll see at 1732040, And our very own Catherine pointed you to this earlier. Under C3, one of the criteria for things that are at least 50 years old is that it embodies a distinctive characteristic of the type the building does. But under D4, which does not have the 50-year requirement, a building must, could display a rare type for which special consideration could be given. And I want you to be, I mean, I am not going to dispute Olaf's mastery, which I happen to agree with, maybe on one side or the other here, but it says... Rare examples of a type which contribute to the diversity in the community need not have been designed by known architects, designer buildings, or contractors. Rather, rare types that contribute to Carmel's unique sense of time and place shall be deemed significant, exceptionally significant. Now, everybody agrees that this study needs to be done. The HRB required the staff, directed the staff, to cause these studies to be done about the typology, the Carmel retail typology. I happen to believe, as a historian, that this is possibly a unique, but at least a very rare national typology in the United States. the Carmel retail typology. I also happen to believe, but I'd love to see the studies once they're done by Clovis or whomever else, that this particular... Victoria, you're almost out of time, and I know you want to pick up on it, so... Okay, last sentence. That the typology should be studied and that Olaf's mastery of the typology is what elevates this particular building not only to a rare typological mandatory typology, member of the historic registry, but an artistically considered one. So I certainly support the do what Chris Campbell said and go home because that's we need this study like everyone has said and as HRB has required. Thank you.

Thank you for being here. Anybody else? All right, that wraps up the public comment. We'll bring it back here.

Mayor, did you want me to make some comments about the arguments that were presented by Mr. Whippy?

I think that would probably be appropriate.

So I would initially point out that this appeal, as Catherine Wallace mentioned a few times, is de novo. And what that means is that it is from the beginning or it's anew. And as a result of that, All issues that were before the HRB are before the council tonight. And that would include the determination of ineligibility. The fact that the HRB did not take any action on that doesn't mean that you can't. So all those issues are on the table. With respect to the application of the de novo standard. I know that Chip Rerig, who is your city administrator for 10 years until the end of last year, confirmed to me many times that the review that's done on appeals to the council are done on a de novo basis. And I spoke with Brandon earlier today to confirm that that's his understanding as well. Brandon, can you confirm that? Yeah, that's correct. Thank you, Brian. Okay. So that's our standard de novo. You can make comments, if you wish, to the state. You also have the choice of making a determination of ineligibility or not. You're not required to make that decision. So with that as a backdrop, Mr. Lippe mentioned that the director did not take action on the determination of ineligibility and that she was required to do so. Well, that's wrong. I'll quote to you from Section 1752.030 of your code, which says that the director shall have the following power and responsibilities, and subsection L says to refer any decision to an appropriate higher level, including the Historic Resources Board, the Planning Commission, or the City Council. Ms. Jeanette did have the authority to refer this to the HRB. She did not need to make a decision in the first instance. A second point that was made by Mr. Lippe was that the decision by the HRB and the action that was taken, which was to support the nomination, cannot be appealed. Well, that's not true either. It's clear under your code that the actions by the HRB may be appealed. You have a Your Municipal Code Section 1754040B, like boy, says that the findings and actions of the Historic Resources Board shall be final and conclusive from and after the date of the final action, unless an appeal is filed with the City Council. Now, I know Mr. Lippe in his letter made reference to Section 1754040B, referring to decisions to approve or deny projects made by the Planning Commission, Forest and Beach Commission, or the Historic Resources Board may be appealed. However, that does not say that other actions by the HRB, such as the one that's before you tonight, could not be appealed. And I think that's further supported by a reading of section 17.24020 of your code, which gives the duties and powers of the Historic Resources Board. There's some 14 powers that they have here, and none of them does it say that their action is final. The city council makes final decisions for the city. Sometimes it comes through the natural course of process. Sometimes it gets to you on appeal. But however it gets here, you are the one that makes the final decision. The HRB does not have the authority to make a final decision without any recourse to appeal under your code. So I would respectfully disagree with Mr. Lippe's conclusions on that. I think that it's clear that, as I said in my initial comments, that you do have the authority tonight, whether you choose Resolution 1 or Resolution 2, as Councilmember Barron has pointed out, one of them would grant the appeal, one of them that denies the appeal. The appeal could be granted on different grounds than those that are stated in the notice of appeal that came in from Esperanza, and you could find that there's a basis to grant the appeal because you want to make comments or make a determination of ineligibility or not. Or you could deny the appeal and do the same thing. So either of the options leads you to the conclusion, leads me to the conclusion, that you can make comments and or make a determination of ineligibility or not. And that's all I have to say, at least for the moment.

Thank you. All right, so we're back for discussion. Or if you have any questions for any of the witnesses that we had tonight. Anybody want to ask a question?

I have a question for staff. In the letter, so this is attachment nine of the packet. This is attachment nine of the packet. Maybe we could bring it up. OK, so if you scroll down to the second page, there's some text there, the three members of the board in attendance. So that text. It says, summarize as follows, and then there are five lines. Where did those lines come from? Is that your interpretation of what the board said? Or did they dictate it to you?