Planning Commission - Special Meeting

Okay, I'm going to call a special meeting of the Joint Meeting of the Planning Commission and the Forest and Beach Commission. I want to welcome members of the Forest and Beach Commission to this meeting today and all of the public. Can we have a roll call, please?

Commissioner Alborn? Here. Commissioner Karapetkov? Yes. Commissioner Locke. Here. Commissioner Ruse.

Here.

Chair LePage.

Here.

And Commissioner Burling. Here. Commissioner Brzocki. Here. Commissioner Ross.

Here.

Commissioner Rutta.

Here.

And Chair Micci.

Here.

All present.

Okay. So that brings us to the first item on Our agenda today, that's the public appearances. At this time, I'd like to invite any members of the public who would like to speak to us regarding any matters of municipal concern which are not on our agenda today. I want to remind you that we are governed by the Brown Act, so your comments need to be within that context. And so any members of the public would like to come and speak to the commissions on any matters which are not on our agenda at this time may do so. Hi, Scott.

Hi. Thank you, Commissioners. Yeah, I just had a brief comment on the revetment information that Greg D'Ambrosio and I provided that is in the correspondence of your agenda packet. That information was prepared, I guess I'd say, as a citizen science if you will, and where we took advantage of high sand scour that went beyond what was available to HKA when they did their assessment in 2023. Simply put, this is intended for consideration by our coastal engineers and staff and hopefully is additive to what HKA had done in their work and any other ongoing monitoring that's happening. THIS WAS SUBMITTED IN RESPONSE TO THE UPCOMING COUNCIL AGENDA, WHICH COUNCIL MEMBER DROMOV REQUESTED FOR AN UPDATE FROM STAFF ON THE CURRENT BEACH ISSUES. AND WHEN I SAW THIS MEETING, THIS JOINT MEETING, I THOUGHT MAYBE IT WAS IN PREPARATION FOR THAT. AND NOW I KNOW THAT'S NOT THE CASE. Suggest you know why it came in when it did. And then lastly as part of Integral's recommendations and next steps found in section 3-2 of the final adaptation pathways report, it states in the near term the city must commit to long-term monitoring. I think this is critically important process where we build off all the good foundational work and from both the integral and HKA and suggests that given the complexity involved, that it warrants a sustained staff process, including engagement of a commission or possibly some sort of committee where monitoring results are consistently updated over time, especially after erosion events and made visible to council and the community. Thank you.

Thank you, Scott. Okay, are there any other members of the public who would like to address the commissions on any matters which are not on our agenda today?

Hi, Karen Carlito representing Friends of Mission Trail Nature Preserve and thank you all for being here and all the good work that you do. We are noticing a lot of damage from EV bikes, I think this will be coming to the Forest and Beach Commission perhaps next month. But I'd just like you to be aware that the entire Mission Trail Nature Preserve is environmentally sensitive habitat. So off-roading bikes, making trails there is very damaging. And we have been working since 2009 to repair trails, to plant trees, to make the preserve lots of fire fuel removal. Just this week, piles and piles of it that we removed, invasive removal. We have worked too long and too hard to have it destroyed by people riding bikes where they don't belong. So I'm looking forward. I hope to see you. at that next meeting. I'm expecting a grandchild in New York, so I'm not sure when that date's coming. But just be aware in the next few weeks, there are a lot of people riding bikes, unsafely, without helmets, not stopping at stop signs. I think we have an even bigger problem in the whole town. And I think the whole state, I think these bikes got out way out ahead of ordinances to control them. So I hope you will just take it personally to start looking around at some of the things that are going on in our town. And I look forward to seeing you in September. Thank you.

Thank you, Karen.

And congratulations.

Okay, is there anyone else from the public that would like to address the commissions on any matters which are not our agenda tonight?

My name is Dan Sturgis. We, as a family, we own the Briarwood Inn in San Carlos between 4th and 5th. This is in regards to last week's car week. Mark and Susan Stilwell owns the Stilwell Hotel next door adjacent to our property. And I have nothing against Mark or Susan. I've already talked to Susan a little bit. But last week there was a corporation, Range Rover, that bought out the entire week and they were given a private permit. I know we're not legally or to be told, you know, that this is going to happen. They came in Sunday and set up Sunday and Monday and started, some of the guests said they started at six in the morning and they went to 11 o'clock at night. I went over there to try to talk to them and they just kind of shooed me away. I came down to the city. There was really nobody to talk to. They told me to come down here and present it. I just want to let you know that in the event of these events in the future, maybe there can be something done as far as the late hours that they work. They were also very loud in their language. But I don't want to ruffle ridges here. I just like to let you all know that what happened. And I'm not sure you were there in downtown during the car week, but they had a bunch of Range Rovers. I know they had the parking in front. They parked in front of our driveway. and I have nothing against the event itself, but it was quite noisy, and I don't know what you can do about it in the future, but I just wanted to voice my opinion.

Thank you for your comments. The next speaker.

I'm Joe Cleese. I'd like to follow up on Dan's comments. I'm a resident of the same neighborhood. Hello, commissioners. It's nice to meet you. Thank you for your service. I'm the vice president of the Del Mission Carmel Community Association across the street from the Stilwell, and I've been asked to speak on behalf of a number of our residents, many of us who unfortunately have to work at home, as well as neighboring residents who rely on parking in our community as well that were adversely affected by the debacle at the Stilwell. I love Car Week. I own cars. One of the reasons we bought in Carmel was because of Car Week. But for the residents of Mission Street, Car Week became Hell Week because of the construction that may or may not have been permitted starting early Sunday morning and continuing well until Wednesday night. I sort of thought that as a community, we have somewhat of a consensus that we've almost reached the saturation point when it comes to these special events, particularly private events that have no public purpose or benefit whatsoever. So you can imagine the surprise when Dan and all the rest of the residents of our neighborhood, and our neighborhood's a little compressed. We have a lot of residents because it's a lot of multifamily, so it has even more of a reverberating impact in our community. At 6.30 in the morning, or early in the morning, I think it was about 6.30, we woke up to loud construction noise, massive iron pillars and structures being thrown around, dropped around, the whir of power equipment, the shouting and screaming that Dan has already recounted. And all of it to build this huge, almost permanent-looking luxury car showroom and event venue. Frankly, it would probably satisfy the affordable housing mandate, you know, if it weren't so ridiculous. I mean, we're talking drywall and metal. And it was preposterous. It was endless. We received no notice whatsoever as a community. We had no opportunity whatsoever to object. And this is a residential community. It's probably zoned in some way that I don't understand, but it's certainly not a commercial zoning. We had no notice, no opportunity to object, no opportunity to be heard whatsoever. And it continued throughout Monday and Tuesday as literally dozens of workers swarmed this site, building this massive structure. Forklifts were beeping the whole time. Tractor trailers with jackknife in our adjacent intersections. They were perpetually illegally parked. They were perpetually parked. I've got pictures of all this stuff because I've become the neighborhood Karen, I think. Perpetually blocking fire hydrants. Occasionally code enforcement would show up. Remember, they don't work on Sundays and Mondays, which is a whole other problem because that's when most of the construction occurred, or the worst of it. They would either ignore it, or they would quickly move something, drive around the block, and park it right back where it was, typically blocking the street. We had tractor trailers parked in the middle of the street for hours and hours, unauthorized and unattended. It appears to be a violation of the city code. It certainly appears to be whatever their permitting was. I filed a public information request early last week. I haven't received a response, so I don't know exactly what, if any, conditional or other permits were provided. One of our neighbors who is much more astute at this than me has checked the website and finds what he considers a suspicious lack of information on the city website about what happened here and how this happened. A police sergeant told us he thought that the permit had been granted on that Friday night before the Sunday construction occurred early Sunday morning, unauthorized construction, I might add, as well. Like I said, this is a purely private event, no community benefit whatsoever. They had security, but that was to keep us out, not to ensure compliance with any rules. The neighbors who don't enjoy parking like we do in Del Mission, they asked me to express their concern not only about the Stilwell taking away a whole full block of public parking during the busiest time of year, but also their continued encroachment. They would typically move their signs to non-approved parking and take that over as well. They were cited. I believe Leah and a group came out to cite them on that, but they just did it all over again. And there's some record, I think, with the city with that particular purpose. So it really hurt people who didn't have parking as well. I think it had an adverse environmental effect. It was problematic for people in my neighborhood to sleep. My dog threw up three nights in a row, which has never happened before. And kind of anecdotal, but inappropriate nonetheless. For me, it was ironic that as you enter our town, we had these signs that said the noise ordinances will be strictly enforced. Not on mission. When we called the police, they would often say that's an enforcement issue.

You're going to be on here three minutes. You want to just summarize? I think we've Yeah. We understand. Just kind of summarize, wrap it up. Thank you.

There was no evidence that, well, a couple of thoughts. And I've got a list of five or six suggestions going forward. I'll submit those separately if you'd like. That would be great. City departments need to talk to each other because police said it's an enforcement issue. Enforcement would say, no, it's a police issue. Nobody really knew what these mysterious documents permitted or didn't permit. When Officer Guevara showed up, they lied to him and told him they had a permit to do heavy construction all day on Sunday and into the night. And so it was a debacle. Our hope is this event returns to Pebble where it belongs. And these kind of events aren't permitted to penetrate residential neighborhoods. It's going to become an acute issue with the open coming up in 27 and continue. These need to be preserved as residential neighborhoods, not as event Range Rover experience debacles. So thanks. Sorry to run over. Thank you. Thank you for your comments.

Okay. Anyone else from the public that would like to address the commissions regarding any matters which are not on our agenda tonight? Anybody, any hands up online?

No, sir.

Okay, we will move on to next item are the announcements. Any announcements from the public, commissioners, staff? Don't see any. Okay, that brings us to the consent agenda. Items on the consent agenda are considered to be routine in nature and do not require discussion or independent action. but members of the public or the commissions may ask for items to be considered individually for purposes of discussion or clarification. So we have one item on the consent agenda tonight, but because we have two commissions, we have to have separate motions. The two commissions cannot act jointly on one motion. So one item is the January 29th, 26th Special Joint Planning Commission and Forest Beach Commission meeting notes. So I will make a motion that we accept those notes unless there is somebody from the public or any others that have any other questions. I don't see any. I'll second your motion. Okay, can we have roll call, please?

Absolutely. Commissioner Alford? Yes. Commissioner Karapetkov? Yes. Commissioner Locke?

Yes.

Commissioner Ruse?

Yes.

And Chair LePage.

And I will turn the chair over to Commissioner Beachy.

Thank you so much, Commissioner Page. I'm going to reread the same information that items on the consent agenda are routine in nature and do not require discussion and independent action. Members of the commission or the public may ask that any items be considered individually for purposes of board commission discussion and or for public comment. Unless that is done, one motion may be used to adopt all recommended actions. And we have the same action, the January 29th, 2026 Special Joint Planning Commission and Forest and Beach Commission meeting minutes. If I could get a motion for that, please.

I move to approve the agenda, the January 29th meeting.

Thank you, Harry.

Seconded.

Thank you. Can we get a roll call?

Commissioner Burley? Yes. Commissioner Rozaki? Yes. Commissioner Ross?

Yes.

Commissioner Ruda? Yes. And Chair Minchie?

Yes.

Okay, that concludes the consent agenda. I'm going to, in the spirit of cooperation, I'm going to turn over the meeting at this point to Chair Meachie. She's going to handle the orders of business tonight.

Thank you, Chair LePage. Our order of business is to review of the administrative draft SLR and coastal hazards chapter of the local coastal program, LCP. And do we have somebody coming up too? I'm sorry, I don't have a list of the names. So thank you so much, Valerie.

Good afternoon, commissioners. I'm Val Gano, environmental analyst with the city. Today's staff is asking that the commissioners of the Planning Commission and Forest and Beach Commission receive a presentation from our consultants on the administrative draft of the sea level rise and coastal hazards chapter prior to its adoption into the local coastal program. We ask that you discuss and provide comments and recommendations on the policies, the goals, the adaptation strategies, and its placement within the LCP, and give direction to staff and consultants on the next stages of the process. The adoption of this policy is a required deliverable of the Coastal Commission grant and has an estimated completion deadline of late 2027. While the commissioners are aware, for the members of the public, I want to point out two important documents relevant to the chapter that you're reviewing today. First is the Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment, which is Appendix A of Attachment 1. And secondly, the Carmel Adaptation Pathways Report, which is Appendix B of Attachment 1. Both were completed by Integral Consulting. The commissions received a joint presentation on the adaptation pathways in January of this year. And Dave Revell, principal at Integral and author of the reports, is here in attendance. And he's available to answer any questions. These technical documents and many others related to this project are available to download from the city's website under public works, environmental programs, coastal adaptation projects. The sea level rise and coastal hazards chapter is the first 30 pages of attachment one, and it's presented to you in one document for ease of your review. But it's recommended by the consultants to be primarily read in the coastal resource management element of the city's general plan along with edits to the coastal access recreation element and it will also require significant changes to the implementation plan. This morning, you received a matrix of the consultants' responses to our prior planning director, Anna Jeanette's comments on the hazards chapter. And you were also sent drafts of the revised coastal resource management element and the revised coastal access and recreation element. And our apologies for the late submission. We realized that it was relevant both to review the chapter's policies in one document and then also reflect on how they would read if it were placed into these existing documents. And then I think it's important to state that we are in the beginning stages of this collaborative process and it's up to the city's leadership to decide on the specific policies and on the chapter's final destination within the guiding documents. You've all received presentations in the past from EMC planning group. The planners who have been working on this project since the beginning, Anastasia Aziz and Esme Wall, unfortunately for us, they moved on to different jobs in the spring. But not to worry, they've been replaced by excellent planners, Asia King and Holly Winiger. Holly is with us online and Asia is here and she's going to present to you now.

Hello, commissioners. I'm really glad to be here today, excited to talk to you guys about all of this. Hello, Chairperson LePage, Chairperson Nietzsche. Like she said, my name is Asia King, and I'm a planner at EMC Planning Group. Holly Winnegar is online listening and available for questions. And of course, Dave and staff are also here for questions. Together, the group of us have really made up this team that have... brought the city through the planning process for sea level rise planning. This afternoon, I'm going to provide an update on the initiative by sharing the proposed coastal hazards and sea level rise chapter and the policies for your review. So the goal here is really to get some good feedback for you guys. My presentation, I'm gonna try and keep it short so that you guys can ask lots of questions and have some back and forth. I think that. All right, so for those of you in the audience, to catch you all up, you may be hearing about this for the first time. This initiative is a multi-year effort that the city has undergone to identify how rising sea levels will impact Carmel Beach and its surrounding built environment. In years to come, the goal of the initiative is to figure out how the city will respond to rising sea levels at a ground level. The work started with a vulnerability assessment where integral scientists studied the historic and existing conditions of Carmel Beach. This created a baseline understanding of how the beach functions. Next, the integral scientists modeled how rising sea water levels will impact Carmel Beach over the next hundred years or so. And I know that sounds like a long time, but I have a three-year-old. And when I think about some of the timelines I'm going to show you in this presentation, I have to remember like, oh, they'll be here and they'll be retired. And so it's really our generation and our kids' generations that we're talking about right now. So a quick refresher, part of what we learned from the vulnerability assessment is that without adaptation measures, sea level rise will really impact Carmel Beach. Ocean water will overtop seawalls, coastal cliffs will erode, causing bluff tops to retreat landward. It will exacerbate dune erosion, and it will decrease the size of the sandy beach, literally squeezing lateral beach access between the shore, the waterline, and the back shore. Taking that localized hazard information, Integral worked with the community over the last couple years to identify feasible strategies that the city can use to adapt to sea level rise. The culmination of these analysis is really the adaptation pathways report that you heard about in January. This report establishes a roadmap for adapting to sea level rise over different timeframes. And because you guys heard about it recently in January, I won't go into too many details, but for the public, the adaptation pathways, you can think of them like action plans to be implemented over time. Its timelines aren't determined by a set date. Instead, the adaptation pathways call out specific things that occur on the coast. So specific indicators and thresholds that dictate which phase of adaptation you're in. So on the table here, you can see Right now we are in the immediate phase of adaptation and sea level rise and there are estimated or projected timelines and time frames for future sea level rise. So to make these adaptation pathways or action plans a reality, the city is now integrating new sea level rise policies into the local coastal program. Today we're gonna go over those policies. But before we do, I want you guys to know that the policies we're gonna hear about are really, were really developed off of four bodies of work. The first two are the city's own assessments that I already discussed, the vulnerability assessment and the adaptation pathways. The third body of work that informs these policies is the Coastal Act and the California Coastal Commission itself. The commission provides guidance, documents to help develop policies and programs that actually align with state law. And finally, the fourth contributor to these policies is the city's existing planning documents. So for the most part, the policies we're gonna hear about today already exist in your planning documents. Some of them are new and some of them need to be replaced because they've already been implemented or they're no longer valid. But for the most part, it's an updating of policies that we're gonna show. If you guys had a chance to look at the report, there's a lot of goals and policies in there. I'm going to try and highlight the policies that really drive the city's adaptation work going forward. And of course, after I go through a few of these, we can talk about any other ones that you guys or the public has highlighted to discuss. So first, the four policies shown here, they've really set the operating rules for adaptation action in Carmel. The adaptive management policy gives the city the mandate to adapt to sea level rise in stages according to the adaptation pathways. So it ties the city to those assessments and that planning work that you've already done. To address public infrastructure, policy 1.2.7 requires the city to design coastal facilities or assets to be resilient to sea level rise. So that's a general policy saying as a city, when we build things that are going to be impacted by sea level rise, we're gonna build them in a way that's resilient to sea level rise. The next policy, 1.2.5, directs the city to prioritize nature-based solutions in their adaptation strategies, meaning how are we gonna tackle this problem? Our first thought should be how can we tackle it with natural materials and natural processes? And finally, policy 1.2.6 sets the city up for managed retreat an adaptation measure that eventually moves assets like critical infrastructure away from coastal hazards. And that's a long run policy. This next set of policies is really the meat of the city's response to sea level rise. As a foundation for these policies that follow after, the first policy I want to talk about is the Coastal Change Monitoring Program. This new policy, it's not really a new policy, it's a revised version of an existing policy in your local coastal program. This revises the city's, the monitoring that was done in the past. It relaunches the program with the vulnerability assessment as the baseline. So all the work that was identified in the vulnerability assessment to say this is where sea level rise is going to impact Carmel Beach and the surrounding environment, that this policy understands that as the baseline for future monitoring. It requires the city to measure specific indicators on the beach at least twice a year. things like the clifftop positions, shoreline positions, things like depth of sand at the sand public access ramps. These measurements will be compared to the adaptation pathways and reported to the city council annually. These other three policies on the screen They all depend on the data that's collected in the Coastal Change Monitoring Program. So the Coastal Access Adaptation Plan, which is mandated by policy 1.2.9 on the upper right there, this requires the city to manage vertical and lateral public access to the beach. This is not a new policy, this is, required by the Coastal Commission, but it's also in your existing plans. The difference is that it filters that work through the Coastal Access Adaptation Plan. So it gives that work and those work plans a home with schedules and specific actions. So using triggers identified by the adaptation pathways, This work program will specify when access ways are repaired, redesigned, or removed as coastal hazards begin to change the landscape on Carmel Beach. Similarly, policy 1.2.10 on the bottom right requires that the city manage critical infrastructure that are located in the coastal hazard zone or anywhere that is impacted by coastal hazards. And again, like resilient infrastructure or responsible, long-lasting infrastructure is not a new policy. The difference here is that it would, the adaptation activities for infrastructure in the coastal hazard area will be managed through this critical infrastructure plan. And those programs and projects will then filter into things like the capital improvements program. Finally, the beach and dune management program consolidates sand redistribution and nourishment activities, addressing sand ramps, revetment, coverage, and beach erosion under one work plan. So these are policies that are telling the city to get what are mostly old programs back up and going to manage the beach. It's giving a policy framework for adaptation management. So this slide is my attempt to visualize everything I just said. These programs all really depend on each other and they're all interrelated. The Coastal Change Monitoring Program you can see on the left collects data twice a year and it produces an annual report to the council that shows trigger by trigger whether a threshold or new phase of adaptation has been reached. That data then filters into a hazard map update, which is required to happen every 10 years. The coastal access plan and critical infrastructure plan establish the thresholds and triggers a new phase of adaptation. And then the beach and dune management program implements a lot of that adaptation actions and others filter down into the capital improvements program. So to summarize and to maybe say that more succinctly, when there's a measurement change on the beach or a measurable change on the beach, the city will know which adaptation activity to implement. These are programs that dictate what that measure change is and what the responding adaptation activity should actually be. So before we dive into questions and answers, a quick preview of what comes after this. After today, we'll take all of your feedback and we'll finalize the sea level rise chapter. within the city's local coastal program. And after that, we will turn all of those policies that we discussed today into actionable regulations. And those actionable regulations exist in a different part of the local coastal plan, which I'm sure you all know about, called the implementation plan. So at that point, when we have the actionable implementation steps, we'll, I believe, come back for adoption for the councils and commissions to adopt and approve so that we can take the final local coastal program amendment to coastal commission for certification. So that was a very quick overview. Here's a couple of the things we discussed and mentioned. I would love to talk about any other additional policies you guys found interesting or hear any thoughts.

Thank you very much, Asia. If you don't mind, we're just going to go around our dais and just see if there's any questions for you. We'll start with you, Keith. Do you have any questions?

Kevin. I'm sorry, Kevin. I don't have any questions right now. I might come back, though.

Okay. Stefan, do you have any questions?

So I was trying to reconcile what I read in this document, the sea level rise admin draft that you proposed, the 44 pages, with our current budget and our projection for capital improvement budget. So it looks like some of the things that you are talking about in this draft, we are already investing in. Like there is, we have already spent money on the North Dunes, and there's a budget to spend more money next year and the year after that. It kind of goes down a little bit.

Yeah.

And then there are some items in the budget that I cannot really map to anything in the document that you sent. For example, there's some work on a sand I would say around the 8th Avenue and this outfall around the 4th Avenue and I would like to understand how that maps to the things that you are describing in your document because it has to be practical, you know, your recommendations are very high level and it has to map somehow into the specific investments that we make on the budget side.

Absolutely. Let's not make policy that just sits on the shelf, right? So I think the best way to think about it is that these are the enabling policies that then get put into an implementation plan. And that implementation plan shapes the city budget, staff activities, programs, and things that happen on the beach. So everything you just discussed, the sand redistribution, place-by-place nourishment that happens and has happened in the past, all of those, including the Fourth Avenue outfall and the Eighth Avenue sand ramp, I believe, all of those will fall into one of these programs. The only difference is these programs or phased adaptation plans, which all come from the existing adaptation pathways report you guys heard about in January and includes all of the different points on the beach. Those activities will fall into a phased plan that's implemented over time. So if you think of it like the beach and dune nourishment or sand redistribution, I'm sure that's happening in a way that's strategic and thought through. This is giving recommendations and a format for how to think through over the next however many years as the shoreline actually changes. So it's giving tools to react to the changes on the ground with those things that are going on.

OK. Thank you. Your floor. Mel, would you like to? I know you have questions, Mel. Thank you, Ms. King.

I have a couple of questions. You're with EMC Planning, yes? I am, yeah. Is this the same EMC Planning that worked on the sixth cycle housing element for the city? I believe so, yes. Were you on that project?

I was not.

How long have you been with EMC?

Just under a year. But yeah, so my colleague, Kylie... Pope was one of the staff, yeah, in Anastasia.

Oh, very nice. Thank you. Have you worked, just out of curiosity, have you worked on other coastal hazard and SLR chapters, or is this kind of a new subject area for you?

This is something EMC is very well versed in, as well as integral. My experience with coastal hazards was as staff with FEMA, so at a federal level, I worked on coastal hazard work.

So this is a little more regional than local.

Well, we did local stuff, but with a federal hat.

And how long have you been on this project for us? For, hmm, since March. Also a couple months. Well, welcome aboard. We're very glad to have you. I have a few questions related to policy 1.2-12. Okay. Okay. I noticed that it actually was missing from your building blocks, but to me as a planning commissioner, zoning is very, very important to me. And I would like to know what the Coastal Commission guidance is related to the coastal hazards reporting, because that is in that policy, right? 1.2-12. And also...

This is the adding phase adaptation plan to coastal development permits within the coastal hazard zone. Would you like me to read it? That'd be great. Yeah, I don't have it in front of me.

Thanks. It relates to screening. Development and redevelopment shall be screened for potential coastal hazards at the development site based on all readily available science... and so on. And it speaks to requiring a coastal hazards report in certain circumstances, a real estate disclosure and deed restriction, and development and redevelopment and possibly subject to in lieu fees and other bonds. It was not listed in the basic building blocks. That's a pretty substantive, and Mr. Revell is inching up. So my question, my first question is, what is the Coastal Commission guidance in this subject area of screening? I'd like to start there if we could please.

For sure. Well already, all development in the coastal zone is screened for hazards. So that's not new, that's happening now. The specific policies are built off of Coastal Commission guidance. So the fees or the fiscal assurances that are mentioned in there for new development, that's based on coastal commission guidance with the idea that if new development is going to occur where there are coastal hazards, that whoever is building or owning the development should know that there are coastal hazards. All future owners of that development should know there are coastal hazards and they should know the implications financially of building on the coast.

And this is, but my understanding is this is guidance. This isn't coming out of SB 272. It's not a, it's not required by law, is that true? This is simply, at this point, this is guidance to our local city to take into account as we develop our own plan. Would that be a valid thing to say?

Yes, I want to make just two quick points. One, the reason we're really going through this process in integrating these updated policies is so that the city has discretionary approval on a lot of coastal development permits. So the more SPECIFICALLY CAN BE ABOUT WHAT IS REQUIRED IN THOSE REPORTS, THEN THE CITY CAN APPROVE THESE. THERE WILL STILL BE APPEAL TO THE COASTAL COMMISSION, BUT THE COASTAL COMMISSION, ONCE IT CERTIFIES, WON'T HAVE AS MUCH ACTIVE OVERSIGHT OF A LOT OF THE DECISIONS. SO WE'LL HELP TO STREAMLINE SOME OF THESE. SO THAT'S A REALLY BIG PIECE OF WHY THIS PROCESS. SB 272 took the sea level rise guidances and made them incentivize them. Basically they are, once you meet these requirements, then the city becomes sort of at the front of the line to get future funding, whether through state or federal prioritization. So that's sort of the nexus. They couldn't make the guidance regulatory mandated without updating the Coastal Act, so they are incentivizing it this way. And we have met all of the requirements in the reports, and now we just need to integrate that into the policies.

So then, thank you. That's very, very helpful. At the moment, as the draft stands right now, we have some very general terms. We really have no screening thresholds specified. Is there a plan to actually become more specific as this draft becomes revised and or we move into an implementation plan? Otherwise, let me give it to you from this chair. Otherwise, we will have folks coming in to, they won't be developing, more likely they're going to be redeveloping a project, and they're going to say, well, I would like to do this. And we here will sit and say, well, we need to look and see, do you have coastal hazards? I don't think so today. No. So you just go ahead and do whatever you like. If you leave that much discretion to a zoning board like the planning commission, that may not be in the best interests of the city.

Yeah. And we do not want to leave you guys hanging. Definitely the implementation plan is where those details will be hammered out. The adaptation pathways and vulnerability assessment actually already have the thresholds, they have recommendations for phasing hazard areas over time. for adaptation over time. So we have all of the numbers. I referenced the pathways and vulnerability assessment in the policies. And then in the implementation plan, we will actually define exactly what the coastal development permit will require. So we'll say if it's in this area and meets this threshold, then this is the condition.

Perfect. So I have one more comment and then I'll yield. And that is simply a personal comment. As I was looking through the chapter, in this policy section 1.2-12 is Mr. Raval's figure three with these three images showing cliff and dune erosion projections. And I'm presuming that this is a placeholder because if you give this to a policy making body, this really offers an awful lot of subjective decision making that we would have to make. So I would hope that our guidance could be a little bit more specific. And then I yield, so thank you.

Yeah, one of the things I'd love to hear back from you guys about is, you know, we've been, the recommendation in the adaptation pathways report is to actually create an overlay zone. So currently the beach area has a forest and park, or a beach and park overlay zone, I think it's called. and there's regulations within that overlay. One of the ways that we can define what is at risk of experiencing coastal hazards and what is not is by creating a coastal hazards overlay.

And that hazard overlay can be used in many different ways. First of all, to screen for different types of coastal hazards. If you fall within that coastal hazard overlay and you're within a redevelopment with the expected life of the project for, say, 75 years, you're going to look at a bigger, farther into the distance into time, those hazard overlays. Those maps that we did are in other jurisdictions, like the city of Marina, we said the best available science is this map right now. It should be reviewed in 10 years. And so that became the hazard overlay, the most extent, and that determined who got the real estate disclosures, who had to do certain aspects of the sea level rise reports and what those reporting requirements were based on where they were in that hazard zone. So it became a way for very easily to say yes or no, you're in that overlay and we're in the overlay. Now you have these requirements. So it does make it easier from a planning commission standpoint of it's a checkbox that has a list.

Thank you, and that will give us, the end goal is to do what's best for our property owners and our city. I mean, that is my goal, not necessarily to make it easier for us up here, but to have the best possible outcome given all this. So thank you very much.

Yeah, and one more note is that there is a policy in there for the city to maintain hazard maps and for those to be updated every 10 years. And so ideally that hazard map would continue to help define the coastal zone, the coastal hazard zone.

And an example can be seen in Pacific Grove, where the first hazard overlay that was being used for planning purposes, I got like five or six single redevelopment, new development CDPs that were required to do these reports. And I dug in and I was like, no, the hazard overlay is too much. The city then, in order to help the property owners and maintain transparency in that decision, brought us in to do site-specific parcel-level hazard assessments so that every homeowner didn't have to come in and do a new hazard report. but they had to take that hazard information and show how they were integrating that knowledge into their project design to reduce the hazards. And so that's another step that can be done. This is the best, most detailed hazard information available for the city of Carmel at this point.

She took some of my thunder already. I'm following up on that same thing. My concerns have to do with, yeah, there are these potentially significant impacts and requirements for private property. And in particular, because House 1.2.16 applies to new development and redevelopment in the area mapped, and I assume that's the mapped area that we're talking about that would be revised every 10 years or perhaps more frequently if necessary. And I think if that's not in the proposal, I would suggest putting that in there that it could be done on a more frequent basis. So it is for the life of the development and an applicant must prepare a phased adaptation plan and hire a licensed civil engineer or certified engineering geologist with coastal experience to analyze future hazards. recommend measures such as increased setbacks or higher finished floor elevations. So there's a lot of impact for people. The big question is the redevelopment definition. And when you get to 20% or more of the existing structure, including multiple sequential renovations. So it's not just a one-time shot, but this becomes a lifetime restriction on this property, a lifetime, potentially a large expenditure at some point because you have the deed restriction that runs with the land on this. And the owner has to acknowledge the assumption of coastal hazard risks and liabilities, a waiver of claims against the city, a prohibition on new shoreline armoring, no entitlement to shoreline protection, possible loss of infrastructure and public access, and shifting public-private land boundaries potentially. That deed restriction is kind of referred to in here as a real estate disclosure policy, and I think that is misleading, that it actually should be a deed restriction that is a condition of development and should have stronger language. It's not just disclosing. You are committing this person to future expenses as the climate changes. And I think, let's see what other things.

If I could just follow up real quick. So just for general knowledge purposes, already when someone is developing in the coastal zone, they already have to hire an engineer to do a geology report. They already have to bring these experts in. None of this is new. The new part is... that the coastal development permit will then condition the project. The project can still be built. It'll be conditioned on being adaptable to sea level rise. And then the disclosure and or deed restriction is also now.

Right. And as far as that goes, also the financial assurance on this. And As 1.2.18 requires an owner receiving a CDP for development or redevelopment in the mapped hazard area to provide financial assurance either through bonding, an in lieu fee, or equivalent security recorded against the property to pay for the eventual removal of the development or remediation. And I think as far as how that affects the planning commission, that also is important for us. And then going into that detail is like the calculations, who calculates what that in lieu fee is going to be or what the bonding will be. How is it supposed to be funded? How long is it remaining in place? Does it increase with inflation? And what does a bond like that cost to a homeowner just in general? And then what happens when the house sells, and how does a transfer affect those financial documents? And then if a remodel crosses the proposed 20% development threshold, does the homeowner suddenly have to obtain financial security sufficient to pay for the removal of the entire house? at that point. So I think those types of things need to be clarified. And I think, let's see if I had any other. I think I'll hold for right now. Anyway, I think that's kind of looking at walking us through a realistic example of how a homeowner would be affected and what the various different... Yeah, I can give you an example.

In Carmel, most of the property is behind the city-owned property. infrastructure along Scenic Drive. In a lot of communities, it's not. It's on the ocean. If that house fails and falls on the beach, that is requiring them to be able to clean up the mess. Carmel there it is a bit different because the city has its infrastructure that services the city in front of most of the oceanfront homes so that bonding you know a lot of those details come out in the implementation plan and at this policy level we really want you to sort of say yeah this is a good policy but the devil's in the details and that's the next phase and we don't want to dive into that yet until we're everybody's comfortable with the policies because we can go into all these details and then you say denied and we just spent a bunch of money that didn't get us anywhere so thank you mm-hmm but I took notes yes they're great questions and having an example you know there's yeah

Yeah, Commissioner Locke's thoughts and Commissioner Hallburn's were mine exactly. Because, you know, on the coast of California, that's where the most valuable real estate exists. And in Carmel, we have a little microcosm of that. And so there's going to be a lot of pressure as sea level progressively increases. And that's the type of phenomenon it is. It's baked in. It's going to happen slowly over a progressive period of time. So what I'm thinking is we have a lot of adaptive strategies here. And the community really favors natural ones, you know, sand replenishment, things which are less impactful rather than armoring. You know, but as it goes on, we're going to have more and more of an assault from sea oil rise, which is going to be compounded by king tides and, you know, high surf conditions like that. So my concern is that we have these adaptive measures, but I think they're going to be challenged by property owners, frankly. That's what I think. And so, I mean, all of these mechanisms which we can use to legally protect the city. You know, the problem for the city is we're going to have to pay for these adaptive measures. And then if they fail because of, not because of our fault, because of climate change policies, which are presently being ignored, you know, scientific evidence which is being ignored, particularly by this present administration, and I'm just going to say it, they're just ignorant when it comes to climate change. And the things that they are doing are going to make it worse, not better. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is the United Nations body, which doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't, it just collects the information from the scientists of over 200 countries and it consolidates it into reports which policymakers can use and they have, they have models and we're blowing right through all the models. So I don't want to scare too much, but it's coming and it's going to be very extreme. So my concern is that what's going to happen is property owners are going to have huge losses because this is the most expensive real estate in the state. And they're going to challenge all these adaptive measures. So I think they're all going to be questioned by legal courts. And I know that's a hard question for answer, but I'm just wondering if this is enough and where it puts us, you know. I mean, you just have some thoughts.

I'm not expecting a... My first reaction is just that that is why we refer to Coastal Commission guidance when writing these policies because they write guidance and they're the regulators and it's based on the Coastal Act, which is state law. So that's why we use that as a foundation. That's my initial response.

So if we have a certification from the Coastal Commission for an adaptive program that provides us another layer of legal protection is what you're saying?

Yes, and it lets you make decisions about when to implement those strategies to avoid those damages.

So the trigger points are very critical?

Yes. And that's sort of the next phase of work in trying to get some of those triggers integrated and the monitoring started so that we know when we hit them.

That's why we need to have some quantifiable base points, which at this point we don't really have.

But let's be clear. I totally appreciate the idea to... follow the California Coastal Commission and sort of make that be the behind the scenes regulator. But on the strategy of managed retreat, it is not required by the California Coastal Commission right now for a city to adapt that as a particular strategy. So I want to be really clear about where we should be with full knowledge. When are we going beyond the California Coastal Commission and when are we side by side with the commission because this is as I listen to my fellow commissioners speaking and the concerns of Chair LePage, I'm not sure as a city we should be adopting managed retreat as one of our core primary strategies because that has significant implications for property owners and it also has significant implications for the city as you just described. All of that city infrastructure that sits in front of those homes, if managed retreat is the chosen strategy, then the cost of the city to relocate, repurpose, remove, move all of that city infrastructure that serves our town, it may be that there are armoring choices that should be allowed to be considered as a protection there. So I'm very concerned about the managed retreat being on the list right now. I'm not sure we're at a point where that's essential to be included, and separately on the nature-based adaptation, which I support, personally support, I think we have to be very careful that we don't, because if you look at the pictures that are in the document, if we were sitting here today, we would not build the stone seawall, we would not we would not have some of the things on our shore that we have today if that were the guiding policy. And so I just think that there may be a desire for nature-based adaptations, but we may find as a city and a community that there will be exceptions to that, like the revetments that we want to maintain or maybe expand. So I think some of these we have to be really careful about.

Yeah. The adaptation pathways report really is trying to figure out what the best approach is to avoid managed retreat. And we went through a lot of those. But the managed retreat is of the public infrastructure and public expenditures. The disclosures come that the city might in the future manage retreat. and you're responsible for cleaning up your mess too. So it's sort of providing a difference between the public and private. We're all working together. We need each other for a community. So we're trying to figure out how to reduce erosion, keep the beach, which is everybody in Carmel, that's the first thing we heard in all the outreaches, we need the beach. And so All of these, remember there's a fork in the road. Can we find similar sand and get it on the beach? Period. And if yes, then we have a lot of options and can probably avoid managed retreat. But we've also all built a sandcastle. We know what happened to that sandcastle. we can't win the fight with the Pacific Ocean. We can dance with it for a little bit, but it's going to win. So at what point are we going to stop spending money, cleaning up the mess and the damages, and just say, hey, if we take a step back, then we don't have as much damages? And the adaptation pathway is and the policies we're trying to implement, sorry, is really about how do we step through it in a sensible way, take away the uncertainty of the sky's falling, it's gonna be 10 feet by 2050. No, we're gonna observe what happens, and when something happens that we've all agreed is time to start planning for the next thing, then we're gonna take that step together.

I would just say that I think on managed retreat, that's something I would almost have as a trigger where at some point that will be an appropriate thing to discuss, but it may be premature today. And the reason I say that is because without the city attorney or our city legal counsel saying us adapting this Ahead of a Coast Coastal Commission requirement potentially opens us up to huge liability with our property owners Particularly the people who are most at risk of some of the things you were just describing so to me that that's the one if I look at everything feels premature for our town and

I think if I could add the beauty of the adaptation pathways is that, and maybe I can find one of the slides. I added a bunch of slides to the end. The beauty is that it looks at those types of things long term. So it's still very small, I'm sorry. recommends adaptation strategies for now, for the midterm, or for the near term, the midterm, and the long term. And often, and we can put this, this can be part of the implementation plan, managed retreat, you'll see on this one, is in the long term, which is, Basically, the ocean is here. Everything's very vulnerable. And currently experiencing extreme erosion are very dangerous. destruction at that time is when managed retreat is considered an activity. And so ideally what we would do for the implementation plan is look at these and say, like, what are we not okay with doing right now? And managed retreat sounds like you're saying, I don't know if that's going to work right now. But maybe by 2090 it might be worth considering. So that's one way to look at it.

And I want to just say it's two words. It's managed retreat. It's not an evacuation. It's not an emergency. We're trying to avoid the emergency. If Scenic Road gets hammered in the Super El Nino and destroys the infrastructure and the sewer line and the water supply line this winter, Is it going to be we will rebuild, or are we going to think about maybe we start planning to relocate it while we have an interim? The LCP today, if we were to approve it today, is going to have to be updated multiple times before we get to long term. But setting that vision, like at some point we're going to have to move back, and we want to do that in a managed fashion, is important. is, I think, critical because we know what we have to do at some point because we can't win that fight with the ocean. We're not going to do it today. It's not an evacuation.

I just think the implications of that policy are... And if you read California Against the Oceans and you see what's happened in a lot of our coastal towns that have very also similar real estate, property owners, that hits a nerve with people that I think is... beyond what our city might want to take on right now. That's all clear.

Thank you. Good questions. Good comments. I'm going to take us back to sort of where we are now. And I'm just going to remind all of the commissioners this is a question time.

So at this point, we're just going to be asking questions while we have you here.

Some of my questions have to do with sort of the here and now and the near-term strategies that we are looking at. You had mentioned in here some of the observable physical thresholds that we should be looking for, things like sand depth at the ramps, frequency of wave overtopping, the reduction of the summer beach width, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know if you've mentioned what the measurables might be and when we take certain actions, or if you've looked at quantifying that into hours as working with the Public Works Department. Those are some key folks that would be actually doing this work. Is that going to be a part of the suggestions that you're giving us?

Well, so the Pathways report does offer specific measurements. that we can implement in the implementation plan, and we can discuss and decide what those should be if we want to go beyond the adaptation pathway.

And do you quantify that, too, into the number of hours, staffing, realistic things that as a city that we need to look at? I know, and that's one part of the question, and that you would like to, I think you mentioned that we would report back to city council once a year, Do you think that that's enough? Is that something we should report back at least twice a year or on a quarterly basis? So those are two questions.

Yeah, I would say the first one is part of these policies is to implement like develop the monitoring strategies and quantify what those measurements are exactly. Set up a monitoring program so we can start to track it over long term. We provided examples of the kinds, but, you know, it's not... You know, we haven't said it's 10 feet and we do this yet. That's sort of coming out in this monitoring plan. There's a monitoring maintenance plan of the coastal armoring. Really important. The work that Scott and Greg did adding to the HKA work, you know, we should be. trying to get a permit right now so we can go put duct tape on the seawalls before this winter. Those are the kind of things we need to start doing, and these policies are trying to implement a lot of this. I know that there's been discussions about setting up monitoring programs in advance of this winter, about trying to do some preparedness, using a lot of the concepts here with sand management and nature-based approaches to help reduce the potential impacts. So part of it, the policies are really trying to implement the steps we've identified in the adaptation pathway, and the details would be flushed out further in those plans.

Okay, thank you. And you had mentioned some of the things we are bringing back, and you had mentioned that we need to bring back. So when we take our sand, we've pulled our sand in. We've begun some of the things we used to do in the past that sort of had been lost. Is there anything else we've, when you talk about as giving a report back once a year, that doesn't seem like that's enough with what happens during the summers, what happens during the winter. What is a reporting strategy both to the public and to our council that would seem to make more sense considering the nature of our weather and what happens during different periods of the year?

So in the past and in the current monitoring program, the monitoring happens twice a year and after or before any major storm. What you could recommend or what we could add in there is every time a monitoring report is written, then it's brought before council. So .

If it's significant, any significant.

So can I ask a question on that just a little bit? Because I also had some questions about this. If there was a report done after every major storm over the past few years, they'd be in front of the city council once a month. And what would they tell them? We lost all of our sand. So I know what you're saying, but it seems like you need everything to let it play out. And maybe a year is the right thing so that you're not reporting because, oh, my God, we had a bad storm and all the sand's gone off the beach.

Yeah, I think there's probably something in the middle that once a year seems like it might not be enough, but... you know, twice this year. From what you've seen, what's the typical with the coastal area we live in?

How it's written now, the monitoring program, as it identifies change on the beach, that change is then compared to the triggers and thresholds that are established in the implementation programs in the critical infrastructure phased adaptation plan in the coastal access phased adaptation plan. And so my recommendation might be when a new phase needs to be triggered, saying we need to move to this new phase of development, if that's more than once a year report, then it should probably be reported.

Yeah, I think that there's an annual report, both in terms of expense, staff time, consultants, to compile and really tell a story of a year is an appropriate measure. There could easily be an after action. After we do our sand management, we're going to report how much volume of sand we moved. That feeds into, but that's how do we report the ongoing monitoring of and be transparent about it. And part of that is how we set up the monitoring program. I mean, we've been talking with Surfline that does a lot of coastal camera intelligence sort of auto detections, shoreline position. So if that could be looked at and shared publicly or shared at council after a big event, we saw this much change. But you could also just go to the website and see that. So there is ways to make the reporting and be transparent about the changes that are going on without having to write another report.

And it can be something like that. It doesn't need to be you reporting it, but is there a way that we can report it so that we can stay on top of it?

Yeah, and I think that's the way to do it. I think an annual report, especially if we're going to report how much the city's spending on adaptation annually, you know, let's do it on the budget cycle.

Okay, thank you.

All right, I'm going to go ahead and move to... How do you address... Kelly, we're going to move to Neil.

Thank you so much.

You've used all your tokens. So first of all, good questions. I know I've spent the last couple days deep diving into this stuff, and I've got a big sheet of questions I could ask, but I kind of pop my head up and go, wow, I wouldn't be able to ask all these questions if we didn't have a good stake in the ground. So first of all, acknowledge that we have something that we can talk about. and have some boisterous commentary on. I appreciate that and I appreciate our staff helping with all this, Mary and Valerie, appreciate it. First, a couple comments. I've been deep diving into the 2024 adopted sea level rise policy guidance update from the Coastal Commission. And to Kelly's point, they bend over backwards to make sure that they're going to work with local jurisdictions on stuff. And so whether the Coastal Commission is mandating stuff or not, it seems like they're also saying this is really important to work with the local jurisdictions. I also took away that they're not paying for this. They pointed out that this is going to be locally paid for in a lot of cases. Now, you commented correctly. There's a carrot, which is if we get in line and we get our LCP updated, we will get priorities for funding from the Coastal Commission if it exists. Whether it does or not, I guess that's for the poly market and the prediction markets to figure out. Okay, enough said on that. I did have a first question. I noticed in the presentation you had a couple C lowerized numeric values and in this update document they talk about some C lowerized values and they're different. And so my first question to you was are you concerned about that? What I noticed is The Coastal Commission in their documentation talks about sea level rise amounts of one, three, six, and 10 feet, which is different than what's in our documentation of five feet. So that's really kind of a hopefully softball question for you.

I'm not worried about it at all because we're going to get to one, two, three, four feet of sea level rise before we get to 10 feet.

Okay.

So this pathways is not based on a curve. It's based on observations. Okay. It takes that uncertainty of planning and taking proactive steps in a timely manner to get there. to reduce risk in advance, way more than a curve that changed. I mean, it went up to 10 feet and came back to 4.6. Okay. In 2007, Schwarzenegger said, all agencies shall use 4.6. Did he have a crystal ball and know it was going to come back? Probably not. Right. The science is always evolving. This takes the uncertainty away from it.

Okay. So I had some concerns in some of the policies. Commissioner Elborn and Commissioner Locke, thank you for raising the ones about the disclosures and the in lieu fee. When I read that, I'll be honest, my first thought was, so we're going to ask people to pay an unknown amount for some unforeseen event that occurs going forward. And if I'm buying a very expensive house, that's not going to fly. And it just kind of makes me think about the complexity and overhead that we're making for people that want to buy property here. Is this valuable or not? I guess is my question. I can't answer it. I think the Planning Commission is going to need to answer that one or chime in on that. Regarding the policies, and I think Commissioner Brzezinski brought this up, the Coastal Commission is not forcing us to prioritize a natural approach to solutions. I think it's really important that we, well, okay, so we're in Carmel Valley Sea. We all probably lean towards a natural approach. That's kind of obvious and given. But let's be honest, you know, and I'm an engineer, so, and maybe I'm sticking my foot in this. If sea level rise is coming up to 10 or 15 feet, and we know this, We may just want to build a concrete wall to protect Scenic Road, right? And I don't think anybody's going to complain about that. So I think my comment here is in the policies, let's make sure we have wiggle room. that we don't obfuscate or intone that we're going to do things in a certain way. Let's make sure that there's a preference for it, right? Or maybe even in the introduction, we can kind of state that.

Yeah, absolutely. And how they're written in the most recent revised version, at least. Hopefully that's what you guys were looking at. It specifies the city shall have a preference for nature-based policies. And even with the... hardened shoreline protection, seawalls, the policy is when nature-based policies are not feasible, then move on to harder shoreline protection. And so there's no policy in there that should be only this at all times. There should be look at this and then look at this before you do this. Okay.

And that was heard from the community loud and clear. It was nature-based first. And that's where that policy came from.

Understood. And I think when you do a survey, how you ask the question can kind of lead to a certain answer. And coming up with surveys is an art form. So we've got to be careful about that. Because I'll give an example. We all want to keep the beach. I went down to the beach earlier this week to kind of measure and figure out how much sand we would have to move. if we want to replenish it, something like 200,000 cubic yards at a certain level of feet. We've talked about wanting to go dredge it up, for example, it's out there. What if we can't? You know, we're a marine sanctuary here. What if the powers that be say, you're not going to go touch that, sorry. Well, guess what? That's off the table, right?

Right, and that's that beach nourishment study and sand source. We can find similar sand elsewhere in the world. Right, so this goes towards if somebody has the option of...

not having caramel sand or having a beach, you're going to get a different answer there. So this kind of leads into my other comment, and I want to leave some time for... Can I just remind the commissioners, this is question time. Okay.

Not comment time.

Okay.

But, you know, they're all great comments, but we just need to move through the agenda. We've also still got to get the public in here and then bring it back to the... Commission for their comments in direction to EMC as to where they're going to go with the documents. So if you have a question, let's just hold the comments.

So you agree with that we're going to be able to have a discussion after this?

Oh yeah, we're going to have a discussion, but right now we just need to have questions. So if you have a question.

One final comment, question. I want to make sure that, thank you, I want to make sure that we are bringing in the documentation into our existing general plan LCP. It should look like what we currently have in our documentation. Let's make sure that the goals and policies are numbered in the same way. Thank you.

Yeah, and I apologize for that. I specifically did not update them until we get your feedback and can number them appropriately. I know it's so annoying for an engineer especially.

So I have a question based on what I thought I saw in the Senate bill. It says one of the things we are required to do is identification of lead planning and implementation agencies. So my question is, who's going to decide the priorities in executing this? So I understand that there are tripwires mainly as you get further down, but there are a plethora of things for near term. And there are studies that need done, measurements that need done. Who's going to do it? So there's two questions. Who's going to decide the priorities? And the second question is, who's going to be responsible for executing it? because we read kind of over and over about how things just fall off the map. And this is just an opinion, sorry, about our city staff right now is stretched really thin, and then we're going to layer this on. Who's going to do it? And so we have that consistency for 5, 10, 15, 20 years. So those are my two questions. Same question.

I think that's a question for the city.

Yeah, you know, right now I have written in there the city manager shall, but that doesn't designate a department, right? And so we, in the implementation plan, can identify agencies, yeah.

Yeah, I was... Good afternoon. I was just looking at Brandon going, are you sure you want to answer this? Yeah. At this point, it's been headed up by the environmental programs staff, which is Val and myself in the public works department, along with many other duties that we're in charge of. So, you know, I think that's something moving forward that we need to look at is in the past when Greg D'Ambrosio was on staff, he had, that was his, pilot project or his project and had a beach task force to work with. So there's different ways we can approach it.

And so I guess the question is then, and it's not that I expect an answer on this, is when will we decide that? What's the point where we say, oh my God, we need to either contract with or hire a an ocean specialist, a beach specialist, or, you know, who, what group is going to decide how do we prioritize, especially the start of a lot of this? Is it staff? Is it a commission that forms to say, you know, we want to do this, this, and this to start, and we need to get the money from the city, that kind of stuff. So I'm not expecting the answer necessarily from you right now, but I think it is all something we need to think through here. is who's going to do it, and who's going to prioritize it, and then who's going to execute it. I agree.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If there's no other questions, I'm going to take it to the public right now. Does anybody have any public comment they'd like to come up and make? Or anybody online, Shelby. We had public comment. Yeah.

Hi, Karen. Karen Ferlito. This has been very, very interesting. And thank you for please going back to reminding commissioners that it's question time. Comment time comes later. It's a hard one, but it's a good one. I was moved by the question about when does this happen, how does this happen, and so on. In my experience of 16 years on Forest and Beach and four years on City Council, if you don't plan for it, it doesn't happen. And in order to plan for these expenditures and these things, we will need good reporting, like you were talking about how many times. Well, it's going to depend. If we have a really big storm, you want to report. maybe more often. If you have a mild year, maybe not so. But I would urge you to have a report far enough ahead of budget time to actually get that to be a very important part of the budget and the conversation about it, not at the last minute. Because we've done a bang-up job on paving this year because we thought that was important. Well, if we think it's important to move our restroom or fix our ramp or whatever it is that we need to do, we have to look at the difference. Like I always told my kids, there's a difference between needs and wants. And some things are very, very critical. And we will only know that if we do those measuring components of this plan, and then we plan for implementation. Implementation doesn't happen on its own. We've had a shoreline management plan for years that has not been fully implemented. Some years they pushed sand for $20,000 worth and that was whether the job was done or not done. Some years it didn't happen at all because it didn't get put into an implementation plan. I hope that whoever is our next public works director that we get in the search we have, that they are a resource management person who knows about resource management, not just an engineer, could be an engineer and a resource management person, but that it is someone familiar with coastal conditions, because this is going to really be something that we must do. not because we feel like it'd be a nice thing to do. This will be a must-do. So I urge you, choose wisely, work on implementation plans, and then check up on those plans many times throughout the year to find out where they're going and what they're doing in those implementation plans so that it doesn't fall a year later and go, oops, we didn't get it done. Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you, Karen. Okay, I think if there's no other public comment, is anybody online? Shelby? I think we're going to bring it back to further discussion. So if anybody, I'd like to go and start from your side again. Kevin?

Yeah, so I do have comments. Having read through all of this, my overall observation is that sea level rise is a global phenomenon. Phenomenon and this is really obvious, but as such it seems any given local no local effort is going to solve this problem and Assuming as science indicates and as chair of the page confirmed for us sea level rise is inevitable It makes more sense to respond in measured and affordable ways while preventing the development new structures near the coast and I'm going to take the position, perhaps contrarian, that I think managed retreat is the right approach here, simply because it's the Pacific Ocean. Spoiler, we're going to lose. I think that there are some things we could do in advance. I think the Planning Commission has jurisdiction over setbacks along the shoreline on properties. I'm pretty sure that's true. Perhaps we should just change all those setbacks so that no construction can occur on any lot closer to the water. There's no public access over the properties between the Del Mar parking lot and 8th Avenue, so any beachward improvements on those lots benefit only the owners. Moving those setbacks buys us time and saves, or at least postpones, spending money on structural improvements to protect privately owned structures. Getting into the document more specifically, we talked about critical infrastructure. This is in 1.2.10. And I've talked about this in council meetings before. I would like to see the city dedicate in the budget, where there was a comment about that, a stairway repair line item that should be there every year. If you ever live in a place where it snows, every city has a snow removal budget. And if you don't spend it, great, you have more money in your budget. But if it snows like crazy, you have to dig that money out of somewhere else. And I think this needs to be budgeted for. I've seen these stairways get destroyed twice in the last 10 years. And if you look at the last two years, three years worth of council meetings, you get some idea how long it takes to repair a stairway. I mean, every time you walk on the beach, you see stairways that are still not repaired. We're not very good at doing this. I also think, right now there are seven access points from 9th to Santa Lucia. I would consider, and I would throw this out there, the possibility of removing some of the stairways the next time they're destroyed. I'm not sure where it's written in stone that they need to be replaced. I know the Coastal Act requires a certain amount of accessibility, and I don't know those exact rules, access points. but I'm not sure we need that many stairways. Maybe in the future the council can just look at not rebuilding them. Having owned coastal property before, this was on the east coast, and having grown up in a beach town, I'm generally opposed to any long-term approach that would assume the installment of rip rap, seawalls, et cetera. Some of the revetments that we have do make sense. I realize they've done a lot of work. And I'm going to have a hard time drawing the line here. Where do you draw that line? I grew up on a beach where we saw the remains of groins that had been put in decades earlier. And they were torn and rusty. I presume they've gotten better. But I'm just not convinced. I put coastal engineering kind of in the same category as storing nuclear waste. I mean, it's very difficult engineering. incredibly expensive. And let's remember that we live in a town that has spent, what, the better part of a decade trying to fund a police station? I mean, I don't know where this money is going to come from. And so anyway, I do want to talk about the overlay zone. Because I want to point as an example, a recent example, the city's response to the new fire hazard maps, the severe fire hazard areas. And the city has really come out of this, out of these new maps that have been published for fire areas. The city has really jumped to respond to this. We're changing our design guidelines. We're hardening our homes. Everybody is doing this. And the city is really getting behind it. I think the same thing could happen here. There is a touchy issue here that nobody really wants to talk about, not even me, but we're talking about spending a lot of money on infrastructure to protect the city from liability from coastal property owners, and this has been mentioned a couple of times in this meeting. So the inevitable effect of sea level rise will be the diminishment of the value of property on the coast. There is no way around this. I have a really hard time accepting the notion that the city is going to invest a lot of money to protect, what, a couple dozen homes? You know, I mean, consider how many voters live in those houses as opposed to how many voters live in houses that do not front the water. And I'm not sure that, you know, I know there needs to be a better legal mechanism for protecting cities from liability, but this has to be a problem that's affecting cities all over the state and I just, you know, eventually Scenic Road is going to fall into the sea. It's probably going to happen, even if we build an expensive seawall. I mean, I don't know. I just, I hesitate to see all of this, assume that we're going to spend a lot of money or that we're going to find the money that is actually going to happen. And nobody in Carmel wants to talk about property values going down, but I think that's what's going to happen to these homes. And investors and people who would buy those homes need to know that. So that's it.

Okay, thank you. I apologize. Is there anybody on the Forest and Beach side that would like to make any comments or give any direction?

Yes.

Okay. Neil?

Thank you for that. Water always wins. I agree with that. Being in a coastal zone also means that we're keeping the coastal resources available for people. I think I read something like environmental justice, et cetera, and that needs to be taken into account. But I hear what you're saying. My concern with the pathways is, well, price and priority, I think, need to be considered. I think having the one, two, or three dollar values is not enough. And we need to look at them more together because we can't do them all because there's not enough money to do everything. And the comment about water always wins and ultimately if sea level rises and it's going to, given the length and complexity and size of some of these projects, does it make sense to try to discuss to do an intermediate project? Because you know you're not going to have enough time and resources for the long game. And so again, going back to, you know, sand nourishment versus a seawall, for example, to protect or doing infrastructure to manage, retreat our wastewater, right? I mean, for me, if I have a choice between a sandy beach or making sure I can flush my toilet and be able to have my water running and have it go somewhere, my choice is the latter. So I feel like some more discussions need to be had there. And I think those discussions need to be had by people in Conrail-by-the-Sea. There's a lot of domain knowledge here, I think. You know, the climate task force that was going on for a couple years, I think they have a lot of great information. I would hope that we're not losing that domain knowledge. I think we need to look at this, again, you know, the COSA Commission acknowledges this is a local concern. They're willing to work with local jurisdictions. I want to make sure that with all this good information, we're now processing that through the local community to make sure what's priority for us and having these hard discussions is happening. Thank you.

So can I just add on to that a little bit? Kevin, I agree with you, but I think without a beach, what is Carmel? And I think, you know, you talk about why people come here. In my opinion, it's not just a recreation where I take my dog in the mornings. People spend a lot of money when they come here, and I think that's why their study talks about the risks and how much money comes in through the beach. So I think there's two-parter for me. It's the locals and the ability to keep the beach around as long as possible, and people visiting the beach as open as long as possible. But it's also an economic engine. that the longer it stays as intact as possible, the more people will come and spend money on hotels and food. And I don't want to lose that in the kind of, you know, part of my... And Neil's right, you know, when I first read this, it's like, well... Pacific Ocean's going to win. Why don't we just skip to the end and put up the steeple? Well, in this whole interim of 70, 80 years, for a lot of reasons, keeping the beach intact and as big as possible, to me, is a high priority.

I totally agree, but it's not just the tourists. I think us locals, especially who've been here a long time, some of the people here and me also, It's just an extremely important, beautiful thing. The environment, the animals, the fish, everything about it is a really big addition to our area. Super important.

I feel like it's irresponsible to be acting today as if the water wins. The water will win someday, but not yet. And I think for our town to not be acting in the best interests of our beach and adapting strategies, and I love the triggers. I think that totally overcomes any, is it one foot, is it two foot, is it 10 feet, it doesn't matter. I thought your comment to that was, fabulous, let's focus on the first foot, right? And let's focus on where, what can we be doing today in this first foot? Because there's a lot of triggers and there's a lot of strategies and a lot of things. And this was the root of my earlier comment on managed retreat, which is, do we have to have that as a council-approved strategy today. It just might be premature. I think there'll probably be a lot of debate on this, particularly because it's not required by the California Coastal Commission. I understand that water wins. I spent some time in North Carolina at one point. We had a beach house. We lost it to Hurricane Fran. We own a piece of oceanfront property that we've still never been able to replace that house on, right? And we probably repaired our stairs coming off that house for every year. Minimal, sometimes it was the whole deck, sometimes it was just the stairs. But I think... We need to support our beach. We need to support our people who live in this town. And I would also just like to add that I really appreciate this work because it is putting a really important focus on our beach. We used to have someone in our public works department dedicated to the beach or a beach person. So I really hope we get a beach resource again and that this becomes either a standing commission or something off Forest and Beach that we can actually bring this. Because the commission tried to do that this year. We'd heard for so many years that sand was pushed up on the beach and we asked what happened. And we were told it was a budget, it was cut for budget reasons. So we were able, by drawing attention to that, at least bring it back. And those are, this is gonna be great for our city to have increased attention and focus on this. Thank you.

Thank you, Kelly. Is there anybody else in the planning, no?

I think the conversation is going into some very depressive direction. We need to do something against that. We have to bring some more optimism in this. It reminds me very much of a conversation I had with my dentist 10 or 15 years ago when he kind of basically looked at my teeth and said, well, your gum line is receding. I'm not sure exactly how we're going to fix that, but How about you start flossing? And I started flossing. And 10 years later, it improved, right? A miracle has happened. So anyway, I'm not willing to accept the whole premise of the war is lost. Let's not fight it. Anyway, we can do a bunch of things, actually, in the meantime, over the next 70 years, if we are lucky enough to be around for 70 years. We already had a project earlier this year, I think it was the Diamonds project, right? Where they wanted to build an ADU very close to the dunes. And I think we reacted correctly, even though we don't have any guidance or any kind of a document to base it on. We basically said, well, this is risky. If you start doing construction so close to the bluff, you can change the balance, you can disturb the balance, and we can lose the sand. And I think that was the right thing to do in the absence of more specific information and guidance and any kind of scientific formula that we can use. Another thing is that, for example, what my dentist would say is, don't chew on your teeth so much if you don't want to have problems with them. How about introducing a tonnage limit on a scenic? I don't think that there is one right now. Maybe there is, I don't know. But you can limit the number, you know, how heavy vehicle should be to be able to drive on scenic. Because every time you have a heavy, you know, 16-wheeler or whatever the size of the vehicle is go on scenic, it does impact the structure underneath. So it's not no harm done. I don't think that anybody is going to notice it if we don't have huge vehicles driving on scenic. Another thing is, every time you dig a deep basement on scenic, when you build a house, you are destroying the foundation. You are destroying your gum, basically. There's no better comparison. So I wouldn't recommend to anyone on scenic to do these huge basements. We do provide... 50% bonus on people building square footage underground, maybe there should be an exception. Maybe we should not provide any basement bonuses for the people who build basements on scenic, because that goes against supporting that structure that is holding the water in the ocean. And the other thing is, from a zoning perspective, we should encourage, if somebody living on scenic decides to buy a property on San Antonio and merge the two lots and build a house high up, we should encourage that. We have mechanisms to support that, right? Because this is, you know, people are smart. People understand what's happening. Everybody's watching the news. So we should be able to allow people to take measures, right? And I think there's nothing wrong with merging two lots and moving the house a little bit higher up next time it gets remodeled. The wood frame houses that we live in have an average lifespan of 70 years. So within the next 70 years, at least, all of these houses will be remodeled. What's the problem of remodeling this house 20 feet higher? I think shouldn't be a problem. So I think there are a lot of things we can do. We already raised the issue about sea level rise when we discussed the sewer line, the sewer replacement line on Scenic, right? We told the guys from the wastewater management district, the water is coming. Is your sewer line going to be okay? And they said, yeah, it's going to be okay. So we already warned them about that. So I guess there are a bunch of things that we can do. These are a couple of things that I remember based on my experience on the planning commission over the past 12 months, I would say. But once we keep that in the back of our minds and we approach all this project with this idea that, yeah, the sea level is rising, we can come up with additional ideas how to mitigate this situation.

Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

I just wanted to remind all the commissioners that staff did request some specific points to evaluate and feedback on. I'm just going to read these. Existing and proposed monitoring requirements outlined in the Shoreline Management Plan. Recommend locations. within the LCP for the sea level rise and coastal hazards chapter, impactful policies such as coastal overlay zones and real estate disclosures, and then the next steps for chapter refinement. So I just wanted to throw that out there while the discussion's going on.

Thanks for the reminder, Chair, and thank you for the floor. My comments are derived rather directly from Mr. Revell's The Adaptation Pathways report. The chapter that we're reviewing today is a documented form for our LCP that also derives quite heavily from that. And so here are my comments, and then I will add about the shoreline management plan. I do have a few open items I'd like to flag. First, I'd like to remind us that the Coastal Commission guidance is just that, it's guidance. SB 272 and state law is different from Coastal Commission guidance. And Carmel is absolutely unique in the state. and it is our responsibility as commissioners, as staff, as residents to take this good scientific knowledge and recommendation that we're receiving and find the best way to apply it for what we're doing here. My first comment would be I would encourage adaptation. Kevin was talking about the adaptation that we've had for fire. There are ways that the city can encourage adaptation through policy. We can explore some options to streamline permitting for nature-based and low-impact solutions. Possibly consider developing a sediment reuse policy and other, and beach nourishment if that makes sense. And to fund those programs, we could consider attaching to our coastal development permit fees some form of fee that would be directly applied to our beach COSTS OR DIRECT APPORTION. I DON'T KNOW IF WE'RE EVER GOING TO BE RECEIVING PARKING REVENUES, BUT IF WE DO, A PORTION OF THOSE COULD GO TO OUR BEACH AND DUNE MANAGEMENT. For the coastal hazard overlay zone, this is guidance. This is not required. I think it's very important that we pay attention to that because should we decide to adopt a coastal overlay zone, that has significant impacts on our property owners. So that is not something that I would consider lightly at all. because should we do that? And yes, indeed, we have access right now to excellent hazard maps. We have those from Mr. Revell. I think they're, and they're rather recent. They're dated to about 2024. So they should be good for us for a significant, for about five years at the least. But should we create that zone? That's going to require, of course, real estate disclosures, testing, all sorts of other things. That to me is very, very serious. I would also like us to continue to maintain compliance with the Coastal Act and our own LCP for armoring policies. And the latest guidance from the Coastal Commission does speak to, and I'll try to get this right, options for re-armoring existing properties. And we... there's a difference between developing new properties and redevelopment. We're heavily on the redevelopment side. So repairing, armoring should be absolutely specified. What does that mean in Carmel? If someone wants to repair, privately repair a seawall, for instance, or some form of armoring that they have, I believe that we should have a policy for that. Is there anything else here I'd like to say? I don't think so. We likely will need to update some of our building codes for coastal hazard resilience standards. Whether those have come down the pipe yet or not, I'm quite sure when they do, that that's something that we can fold into our own municipal code. And then specifically for the shoreline management plan and comments for that, I'm echoing some of my fellow commissioners' comments. What's gonna be done, when is it gonna be done, who's gonna do it, who is the authority to do it? All of those, that needs to be answered for all of our monitoring, all of our triggers. It seems that our, strategically, as a city, We have two major decisions that we must make. The first has to do with beach nourishment. And this is in the short term. First has to do with beach nourishment, weather, and how we might want to do that. And also an alignment for scenic road. And what are those triggers? What kind of monitoring are we going to do? And what are those triggers that is going to call us to action? Who has the authority to declare that a threshold has been met? who gets to say, we now have to take action. That's critical for something like this so that we're doing a little less reactive emergency response and a little bit more trigger-based adaptation. I think that's what the Coastal Commission guidance is trying to encourage us towards. I don't know that we have very much change that we need to add to our coastal access policy, but I know that Ms. Bilsey sent us two updated documents today that we can have a look at. That's all I've got for now, so thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Mel. Is there anybody else? I think Mel covered a lot of it.

Actually, I was going to say. She certainly got my points in there. She covered pretty much everything I said. I think it's super important that we look at budget implications on this and plan for this. Because we don't have the money to do these projects at this point. And we need to look at how we can do that. And that's probably one of the biggest things.

That's probably one of the things I, just trying to quantify this, what sort of time, what sort of resources, what sort of staffing are we going to need to achieve a lot of this monitoring? And, you know, we have to walk before we can run, as Commissioner Stephan had mentioned, you know, floss our teeth first. You know, I know we, this was an alarming report to read in a lot of ways, and we got way down the line, but there's a lot that we can do right now And I'd like to see us manage that and come up with a plan for that.

Can we, for example, either put money in the budget now across the Coastal Commission for some funding to figure out the beach nourishment? That seems to be an important and popular item. I would love to be able to figure out how much it's going to cost because that's going to inform everything. And it will also help us figure out, I mean, I agree with what you're saying. Let's try to save the beach. I don't want to mean we're losing it. I love the beach there. And if it means, for example, we figure out, we want to save the partial beach, right? Like we know there's high points and moving sand around to save as much as we can. But it seems like there's some information, some detail that would be great to figure out now. And maybe it's a small amount of funds, either in our budget, or go ask the Coastal Commission to go figure out how much it would cost to dredge, if we can dredge, and do some things like that to figure out what it would take. And that can help a lot.

I have one additional build on that. This is something we brought up at the very beginning of this process that was on the very beginning of the chart when we did the beach survey. The beach does not end at the 4th Street stairs. Our beach extends to Pebble and Scenic Road goes into Monterey County. And if I had one ask that I asked previously, but I think if we're able to get focused on this in Carmel and establish a committee, that we should be reaching out to our colleagues at Pebble and the county because we have the beach, our beach actually extends into other jurisdictions. And if we had a collaborative effort on the monitoring and some of these things, we might be able to share resources and share costs on the monitoring and on some of the methods in terms of our implementation strategies. So I would really, it's not anywhere in our documentation. For some reason, despite asking many times, could we please survey the whole beach and not have it stop at the four street stairs, that wasn't part of this project. But I really think we need to think about this as our coastline that we share with two close neighbors and make sure that we reach out to our partners because I think that we'll be able to have a much more cost efficient program if we do that. Thank you.

So I'm just going to make one more plea out of all this. I do think, and Mary, I think you are great. I do think we need someone on staff who leads this process and who doesn't have a hundred other things to do. And that to me is a big priority because You know, you talk about applying for grants.

Who's going to do that?

You know, you think about that kind of stuff. So I think my plea is I think we need a point person who is really a beach scientist to really help us on this. And my second point about the, you know, Neil brought it up. If you ask me the question about would I like Carmel's sand to stay exactly the same as it is, it's wonderful. I would say yes. If you ask me the question of Would you like it to stay the same as it is or have no beach? I would probably have a different answer. And so I'm wondering if we go out and we can't find the sand to nourish the beach, would we settle for some mixture of something? And I have a feeling compared to not having a beach, I'd probably settle. But that's just, again, survey stuff is interesting because Do you ask those either or questions? And it changes depending on what the either or question is.

Thank you, Harry. Is there anybody else has any comments? Okay, I'm going to go ahead and turn it back over to Chair LePage to close.

Okay, thank you. I just I do have a couple of short brief comments. I want to try to address the what staff requested and I just want to say that the draft really reflects an outstanding foundation that closely aligns with the community priorities. It's nature-based protection. It's habitat preservation. It's an aesthetic compatibility and it protects Carmel Beach distinctive sand. The proposed technology-driven program rather than the manual modern that we had before, solves a lot of the cost and labor issues. And it was going to provide the database that we need, which leads into the fact that the chapter should stand for a standalone The coastal hazards and sea level rise should stand alone as an element of the local coastal use plan. I think that's going to give it the weight that it needs and the focus that it needs. The coastal hazard overlay zone, the deed restriction disclosures, the financial insurance policies are each strong and they legally protect the city but all three need to be have quantified definitions design of life threatened and unsafe for occupancy and feasible long-term financial vehicles these need to be enforceable and they need to be a litigation resistant and before formal adoption the city should first set numeric design life and redevelopment definitions and certify historical database baselines, consolidate and stagger two-year master plan deadlines, and authorize seasonal retractable accessible stairways, and prioritize the beach nourishment and sediment study. So I think all of these will lead to the chapter being certified by the Coastal Commission, which I think is important so that we have access to the funds that are necessary. So those are my suggestions. So I want to conclude this by saying this is really an important discussion for this community. I think we're going to have further joint meetings in the future between the Forest and Beach and the Planning Commission because this is going to be ongoing. We all understand that this is something we're going to be dealing with and going into the foreseeable future. And it's going to be mutating. We're going to have events. As you mentioned, we have a big El Nino coming up this winter that could create an extreme event. And I think the way that this plan has been developed, we have trigger mechanisms. We have adaptive strategies, and we have a way to implement it. So I'm very hopeful that this will be the way that we need to be. It's the way we need to be. It's the approach we need to take. And I want to thank everybody for all the great comments, the public, and all the commissioners. So with that, I'm going to adjourn this meeting. And we're going to take about a 15-minute recess before we start the regular planning commission meeting. And I want to thank all of the Forest and Beach commissioners.

Thank you as well. Thank you.

I remember, like, halfway through, I went, well, my purse is under the front seat of my car. I better go get it. Is it locked? Yeah, but it's on one of those side streets that people have broken into.

Well, I figured we'd...