Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

ALL RIGHT. GOOD EVENING. WELCOME TO THE PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING OF MONDAY, AUGUST 10, 2026. I NOW CALL THE MEETING TO ORDER. NOW IT'S TIME FOR THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE. SO IF YOU JOIN ME IN STANDING AND FACING THE FLAG. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Ms. Green, will you please do the voice roll call?

Thank you, Commissioner Klupac.

Here.

Commissioner Andrade? Here. Commissioner Martinez?

Here.

Okay. And can you make a statement, please, for the record?

I am attending this meeting remotely due to work obligations. No one else is in the room with me.

Perfect. Thank you. Vice Chair Zieg?

Here.

Chair Harlan?

Here.

And the record will reflect that Commissioners Rojas and Dixon are absent.

All right, okay. We have no announcements or presentations this evening, which takes us to public comments for matters not listed on the agenda. So that'll be heard at this time. If you'd like to make any public comment, please come to either lectern. And if you're joining us remotely and you want to speak by phone, please press star nine. And if you're joining us by Zoom, please use the raise hand option. Is anybody from the public wish to speak this evening on public comments? You're all holding it in for the first item, yes? Come on down. Don't be shy. NO, FOR ITEMS THAT ARE NOT ON TONIGHT'S AGENDA. CORRECT. IF YOU WANT TO SPEAK ABOUT ANYTHING OTHER THAN WHAT IS ON ITEM ONE OR ITEM TWO, COME FORWARD. OKAY. MS. GREEN, DO WE HAVE ANYBODY ON PHONE OR ZOOM?

NO, MR. CHAIR.

OKAY. I'LL CLOSE PUBLIC COMMENTS. NOW IT'S TIME FOR PLANNING COMMISSIONER COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS. LET'S START WITH COMMISSIONER

Just so happy to see so many people here tonight public input is very important So thank you all for taking the time to show up tonight Commissioner Andrade Will echo the same welcome to Planning Commission excited to hear what you all have to share Commissioner Martinez

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Unfortunately, I can't see the full audience to know just how many people are there. But thank you, everyone, for attending tonight. Two announcements. The GIS strategic plan survey closes tomorrow. So if you're interested in providing input to, I believe it's our IT department on GIS and its relationship to all of our different various city functions, that survey now closes tomorrow. Also tomorrow, um august 11th is a free performance in the park symphony on the go is going to be tomorrow at heller park at 6 30 p.m and then it continues on with a few other uh productions in the following weeks i believe at different parks that's it thank you mr chair thank you uh vice chair sick

I certainly want to thank everyone from the public who's shown up. When it comes time for you to talk, I hope you're not bashful and you take the time to come to the podium and tell us what's on your mind. I'd also, Mr. Chair, like to let you know I want to pull the consent calendar item. Okay, perfect.

All right, well, I have no comments, so let's hear the consent calendar item then. Ms. Green, can you just read the title of that?

This is the July 27, 2026 unofficial meeting minutes.

All right, Vice Chair, go ahead.

Thank you. For the item dealing with the 15-unit development and specifically my comments relating to that, I LISTENED BACK TO THE, WELL, I DIDN'T RECOGNIZE MOST OF THESE WORDS, AND I LISTENED BACK TO THE TAPE AND I DON'T KNOW IF THERE'S BEEN A TRANSPOSITION PROBLEM, BUT SEVERAL OF THE COMMENTS HERE ARE NOT AT ALL WHAT I SAID. I DID MAKE COMMENTS, AND SO I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE STAFF GO BACK AND MODIFY THESE MINUTES TO REFLECT MY COMMENTS. Specifically, I didn't talk about activating the property. I didn't talk about the site had been underutilized for years. Those may be somebody's opinions of the site, but those weren't comments that I made, so I would just ask staff to go back and review the tape.

Okay, given that, do you want to move that we consider the consent calendar items corrected at the next meeting?

YES, I WOULD. THANK YOU.

IS THERE A SECOND FOR THAT?

JUST A MINOR ALSO ON THE TOP OF PAGE 15 UNDER MY COMMENTS. JUST FOR MY PRONOUN. THAT'S ALL.

ALL RIGHT. WE HAVE A MOTION. SECOND. CAN WE CALL FOR THE QUESTION?

I'm sorry, who has, who did the motion?

Vice Chair Zick.

Okay, the second.

There we go. Commissioner Andrade.

Okay, thank you. And we'll have to do, start a vote.

Commissioner Klapak. Yeah, House Martinez can vote.

Yep, we have to do roll call vote tonight on everything.

Okay, and-

Commissioner Klepack? Commissioner Andrade?

Yes.

Commissioner Martinez?

Yes.

Vice Chair Zick?

Yes.

Chair Harlan?

Yes.

Motion carries 5-0. Okay.

That was a little unusual, but... Moving right along. We have two public hearing items tonight. Ms. Green, will you please read the title for public hearing item number one?

Thank you. Fairview Developmental Center Specific Plan. And the staff presentation will start off with Ms. Dacey, Principal Planner.

Okay. Good evening, Ms. Dacey.

Good evening, Chair, Vice Chair, and Commissioners. Melinda Dacey, the Principal Planner with the Community Development Department. With me this evening are Director Carrie Tai, Ana McGill, Planning Manager, Paul Martin, Transportation Services Manager, and in addition to our consultant team here this evening is Karen Goley, Jennifer Kelly, and Paul Herman. We also have additional staff in the audience as well from different departments. SO THIS EVENING, THE PRESENTATION WILL GO OVER THE BACKGROUND OF THE SPECIFIC PLAN, THE COMMUNITY OUTREACH AND VISIONING EFFORTS FROM THE WORK TO DATE, HEARING DRAFT SPECIFIC PLAN UPDATES AS WELL AS MAXIMUM UNITS INCLUDED IN THE FDCSP, THE TRAFFIC ANALYSIS AND OTHER UPDATES. WE WILL ALSO TALK ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS AND NEXT STEPS FOR THE PROJECT. SO TO GET EVERYBODY UP TO SPEED, THE CITY HAS ACTUALLY BEEN IN THE PROCESS OF DEVELOPING THE SPECIFIC PLAN SINCE 2022. THERE HAVE BEEN SEVERAL LEGISLATIVE ACTIONS SINCE 2015 THAT REQUIRE THE FDC SITE TO HOUSE HOUSING FOR DEVELOPMENTALLY ESTABLED AS WELL AS THE STATE ADOPTING A CLOSURE PLAN. THE FDC SITE OFFICIALLY CLOSED AT THE END OF 2025. In addition, Senate Bill 188 approved the disposition of the state-owned property, and the city and state entered into agreement to lead the planning effort for this specific plan. In addition, there are several other bills that were passed at the state legislature, as well as the state pursuing a 15-acre emergency operations center within the Fairview Developmental Center campus. And Citi started to prepare the specific plan and the EIR in 2023 after we had selected the Citi's consultant. And we also commenced the planning process at that point. In addition, earlier this year, the Department of General Services had initiated their disposition process to select a master developer. At this time, as we understand it, there has been no actual application submitted for the disposition of the site, but that process is still open and ongoing. So some other items that have been at play here, the DGS had a 2021 infrastructure assessment which specified 2,500 units and assumed 500 affordable housing units in their analysis. Their analysis had also talked about the site needing to be financially feasible. This report came out of the state legislation with SB 188. In addition, the city adopted the housing element. The FDC site is a housing element site. It includes 2,300 units with 920 lower income units and 690 moderate income units. Based on that 2,300 units, the lower income calculation is 40% of 2,300. In addition, the city had processed a financial feasibility analysis, which identified that the break-even for the development to be financially feasible and economically viable is 3,450 units. In July, DGS has provided the city with a letter of support for what's currently in the draft plan and overall support the legislation, which requires that the city plan for housing. In addition, the city and state agree that housing shall be a priority use with supporting uses, so the mixed income, mixed use environment for this site. So the 2025 financial feasibility analysis, we have the information here on the screen. So there's a financing gap for the 2,300 units. What's financially feasible is a range between $3,400 3450 units and 4000 units. The Planning Commission and City Council directed staff to study up to 4000 units in the environmental document but did not preclude the city from modifying that direction in the future. So the specific plan area is a total of 110 acres. The Emergency Operations Center is located in the southwest corner of the site. It is about 15 acres and which leaves 95 acres in total for the entire Fairview Developmental Center specific plan. Of those 95 acres, the Department of Developmental Services will retain 15 acres of ownership, leaving 80 acres for the master developer to propose housing, open space, parks, and the supporting retail non-residential components. So then I'll move on to the community outreach efforts that we have undertaken to date. as noted the project really started to kick off in 2022 the city and state entered into an agreement around that time and the outreach really began in 2024 we've held a total of five workshops since that time each of the five workshops had three different meetings on various nights and locations throughout the city those workshops We obtained community input regarding the creation of the vision and the guiding principles for the area. We developed the draft land use and circulation alternatives with community input in mind, as well as met with the planning commission and city council on various occasions throughout the process. In 2025, for example, the city met with planning commission a total of three times and city council one time, and that's where we received the direction to study up to 4,000 units in the specific plan. In addition, the specific plan was drafted and released for public review and comment earlier this year. The specific plan has land use, open space, design, and circulation plans, and we also have released a draft environmental impact report. And so we are in phase four of the total planning process for the specific plan. We held a town hall type meeting, a community Q&A just earlier in July. AND THE PUBLIC PROVIDED SOME REVIEW AND COMMENTS ON THE DRAFT SPECIFIC PLAN AND THIS PLANNING COMMISSION ALSO HELD A STUDY SESSION ON JULY 27. SOME OF THE INFORMATION ABOUT THE WORKSHOPS. WE HAD THE PROJECT KICKOFF. WE DID THE VISION AND GUIDING PRINCIPLES AND THOSE HAVE BEEN REFINED THROUGHOUT THE PROCESS. EACH OF THE WORKSHOPS WERE COMMUNITY OPEN HOUSES WITH EXCEPTION TO THE TOWN HALL STYLE EVENT EARLIER IN JULY. IN ADDITION, WE HAD HELD SOME STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT MEETINGS WITH GOLF COURSE GROUPS. IN TOTAL, WE'VE HAD TO DATE EIGHT PLANNING COMMISSION AND CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS. ANY TIME WE HAD ANY COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT, THE CITY HAD UTILIZED THE PROJECT WEBSITE TO DISTRIBUTE INFORMATION, SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS. WE DID MAILERS TO 46,000 HOUSEHOLDS WITHIN THE CITY. ALSO POSTING FLIERS IN VARIOUS LOCATIONS THROUGHOUT THE CITY. And at the community meeting, the town hall from draft to decision, it was an open forum Q&A that we held. There was question and discussion opportunities and the overall topics that were referenced at that meeting include the process to date with the site evolution, state coordination and questions regarding the emergency operations center, the number of housing units included in the site, as well as affordable housing, the open space requirements, and we also heard comments regarding traffic concerns, secondary access road, emergency access and internal neighborhood traffic. So based on all the workshops, this is a cumulative update and average for how many residents were reached for social media and responses to surveys that were also conducted during the process. So that I'm gonna turn it over to Karen and she'll continue from here. Good evening.

All right, I'm going to cover the contents of the specific plan. Much of this you heard in our last study session. But for the benefit of the public that's here tonight, I want to make sure that I hit all the key highlights. All right, so the specific plan itself consists of eight chapters. And the contents overall is largely a response to state law. It's organized starting with the history of the area, which is important, as well as a vision. the land use plan itself, the flexibility that's built in, as well as the maximum build out that is allowed. We've got development and design standards. So we've gone beyond traditional zoning and made sure that we included design standards that really will dictate the form and function and layout of future buildings and open space areas. We've got a mobility plan that addresses all modes of travel and an infrastructure plan that addresses the need for a complete overhaul of the infrastructure associated with that site. And then finally, an implementation, more detailed information on the phasing that's going to be happening over a period of many years and financing options. All right, back in March, after the draft specific plan was first released, we received public comments in an open house forum that resulted in refinements to the vision and guiding principles. We also included more details after that related to the phasing and the implementation process and I'll be sharing a little bit more of that with you in a second. And then staff updated other aspects of the plan that address classification for land use, that would be consistent with your ongoing zoning update process. We also removed the residential parking minimums that would be consistent with council direction for housing element sites. And then there was additional outreach following that related to the secondary access road that's being proposed. So chapter four of the land use plan does identify the land use designations and Essentially, the minimum amount of residential that is required is 2,300 units, and then the maximum that would be allowed is up to 4,000. Commercial square footage, and we've got a whole variety of what that could include, ranges from 10,000 to 35,000 square feet, with a minimum open space of 14 acres. That open space is a requirement for publicly accessible open space. This would not be the private open space that you would see within the housing projects themselves. Affordable housing in the plan includes a very low income, low income and moderate units, as you see there, which is a carryover, of course, from your housing element. The mobility plan establishes a backbone roadway system. And that's what you see here in the red. Those are the required roads with some flexibility for their final alignment. The other roads that you see in a yellow are more flexible in terms of their final location and alignment, depending on how the future master developer wants to lay out each of the blocks for construction. And then we've got a multi-use trail around the plan area that you can see here. We've also got a Paseo. Regarding the secondary access, it is required at the 2300 unit threshold and above, and that will be monitored and reevaluated as development progresses. We are suggesting it occur at the south end of the site. At the other EXISTING INTERSECTION AT HARBOR. AND IT WILL BE CONTINUED TO BE STUDIED AND FINALIZED WITH THE MASTER DEVELOPER. AND THAT WILL INVOLVE ADDITIONAL MEETINGS WITH THE GOLF COURSE. THESE ARE THE SECONDARY ACCESS LOCATIONS THAT WERE ALSO CONSIDERED. AS MENTIONED LAST TIME, INITIALLY WE HAD BELIEVED THAT MERRIMACK WAY COULD BE THAT SECONDARY ACCESS ROAD. IT IS A PRIVATE DRIVE THAT HAS that is part of an existing lease with Harbor Village houses there. And so that is not available for general access. It is available for emergency fire access in the event of emergency. The other alternative locations are shown here at the bottom, and that was determined to not be feasible for a number of reasons that we could go into in more detail. In terms of the open space plan and requirements, we've done an initial layout of where the 14 acres could be located, with the idea being that we wanted to make sure that they were conveniently accessible to the majority of the residents that are there. And with respect to the larger open space, we wanted to make sure that it was conveniently accessible near the entrance to the project site. In addition to this public open space, we've got a private residential requirement of 90 square feet per unit, and that can occur either in indoor or outdoor common areas, private open space, including rooftop areas, wide variety of options. And then with respect to the commercial use, to the extent that a future master developer wants to do a standalone commercial center, there is a requirement for 5,000 square feet of commercial that would be designed as part of a placemaking component of the project. And then finally, it's just very important to note that the standard of 4.26 acres per thousand population for public open space can be met through a combination of land dedication, park improvements, and in lieu fees. The infrastructure plan does lay out a proposed infrastructure system for all dry utilities and wet utilities. Adequate water supply is available. There are new public safety facilities that although are not currently proposed on site, they are permitted and may be considered in the future. And then in addition, there is currently underway a Nexus study to develop a fee for future improvements. Chapter 8, the administration and implementation section, establishes a new, very tailored development review application process because of the size and the long-term scope of this project. It also establishes a general timeline and responsibility for implementation. There are interim requirements, of course, related to fencing, stormwater pollution, construction staging area, et cetera. IT ALSO REQUIRES A TRANSPORTATION DEMAND MANAGEMENT PLAN THAT IS GOING TO SEEK TO MINIMIZE THE AMOUNT OF TRAFFIC THAT IS GENERATED INTERNALLY WITHIN THE SITE. AND THEN IT OUTLINES RESPONSIBLE PARTIES FOR FUNDING AND LONG-TERM MAINTENANCE. THIS IS TABLE 8-3. IT JUST QUICKLY GIVES YOU AN IDEA OF THE RANGE OF ACTIONS THAT NEED TO OCCUR OVER TIME WITH RESPECT TO GETTING THE SITE ENTITLED. actually constructed, as well as showing the responsible party and general funding covers some of the upfront initial interactions and development review processes. Phase one is the site preparation. Phase two is the backbone infrastructure that needs to occur before anything else. And then you move on to additional backbone infrastructure going in. All of this has to happen prior to development. And then phase three is really the implementation of the development pads to both affordable housing developers as well as DDS housing. And then on-site parks and trails will also be provided at that time. Moving on to Table 8-4, this gives you an idea of the ongoing ownership, maintenance, and funding. This was a question at the town hall meeting. We wanted to make sure we brought it back up to you so everyone could see the identification of the funding source, long-term ownership, and long-term maintenance of all these items. The Planning Commission study session revisions following our meeting with you two weeks ago included updates to different sections. There were some typos that we found that you found for us. Thank you. We also made sure that we mentioned pedestrian before vehicular circulation, given the priority that is within the city. So that's been corrected. In Chapter 4, under land use and urban design, we've gone back in and defined the extremely low income category. We've also updated Table 4-3 to consolidate uses so we were not as detailed, but we're also giving a greater level of flexibility. uh... for a variety of uses to come in under chapter five mobility we have incorporated flexibility and identified the fact that there is flexibility for merrimack way uh... to eventually become a secondary or third access road in the event a new lease agreement allows for that to happen uh... whenever that lease does and And then update to figure 5-16 we added a missing bus stop and we've update updated some other mobility figures You can see all of that in a track change version we've also added a list of crosswalk features for pedestrian safety and finally we've referenced the green building code for bike parking and In Chapter 7, we updated the fire topic to make sure we included emergency services. And then under administration and implementation, we updated Table 4 to correct the ownership column for a couple items. All right, back to you.

Thank you, Karen. In the staff report for planning commission's consideration this evening, Staff included some information about the financially feasible alternatives that could be considered. As noted in the presentation, Planning Commission and City Council did direct staff to study up to 4,000 units for environmental purposes, but that did not pre-commit the city to any final decision on the total number of units for the plan. The requirement for this being financially feasible does come out of state legislation. It does specify that the city has to ensure that this is... available for third-party potential purchases and to provide certainty for the community and a potential developer regarding the specific plan. Accordingly, in person to the table that was shown earlier regarding the financial feasibility, That range is really around 3,500 units or 3,800 units where there's no financing gap. And what that trade-off can potentially look like in regards to Planning Commission's decision and deliberation this evening is a potential increase to ground floor open space. So at 3,500 units, it's estimated to be around five acres of additional ground floor open space that could be accommodated. or at 3,800 units and additional two acres of ground floor open space. So right now the plan includes 14 acres. That would increase it up to 19 or 16 acres of open space. So the graphic on the screen too also shows the different planning areas and the number of acres associated with those areas where you can see how that trade-off may come about with reducing some of the unit counts. And then in the staff report, there's also some comparable real life built areas within the city to have a comparison regarding the dwelling units per acre. At the 3,500 unit threshold, 44 dwelling units per acre rounded up to the 80 gross acres is what would be resulting from that. In the community, there's the Baker Block Project located at 125 Baker Street East in Costa Mesa, which has 58 dwelling units per acre. And then Halcyon House, which is located at 585 Anton Boulevard, is 81 dwelling units per acre. At the 4,000 dwelling units in this specific line currently, that density would be around 50 dwelling units per acre. In addition, the staff report includes information on traffic analysis. So there's a level of service traffic analysis that was conducted. It is a transportation study. It is included within the draft EIR staff had prepared a memorandum and distributed that to planning commission earlier this evening. for their consideration and inclusion in the recommendation. We'll talk about that a little bit more in the end of the presentation. However, the level of service analysis is a way for the planning and traffic engineers and the community to understand congestion on city streets as it relates to intersections. And they use a grading system that is A through F. The city's adopted minimum acceptable standards, LOSD, That analysis had looked at 26 intersections throughout the city. 15 of those were on Harbor Boulevard, and the analysis was done through traffic modeling, which is a standard practice. The analysis found that with the project, which includes the cumulative analysis for the Measure K rezoning, which is another citywide effort taking place, and the intersection improvement shown on the screen here in Figure 5-14, would result in the LOS of D, which meets the city's minimum acceptable standards. Other updates that is before the Planning Commission for their consideration is for internal consistency with the specific plan. The land use map and the general plan land use element will be updated accordingly. On the screen, you see that the current land use designation will be changing for multi-use center. to the proposed, which is to refer back to the specific plan, as well as rezoning, changing the land use to the EOC site, to public and institutional, which is a consistent and compatible use for what they are currently doing there. In addition, there's zoning map updates to refer to the FDC SP as well, and that zoning change is currently institutional recreational multi-use, and that will be changed to refer back to the specific plan, And we're doing that because the specific plan is establishing its own land use and zoning regulations. The general plan land use element amendment will remove the existing FDCSP land use designation of multi-use center, which you saw on the prior screen. And it will add the specific plans as a category under the land use element to include the FDCSP. And then we'll also eventually incorporate the other specific plans in the city into that document. There's zoning code amendments as well for consistency. We will be removing the zoning designation throughout the zoning code for the institutional recreational multi-use and then add a new chapter titled specific plans to the municipal code. And I'll hand it over to Jennifer to talk through the environmental analysis.

Good evening commissioners. I'll be discussing the environmental impact report or EIR component of the project. Before preparing the EIR, the city issued a notice of preparation for a 30 day public review period in October of 2025. An in-person scoping meeting was held on November 17th, 2025 to inform the community about the project and the EIR process. After the NOP and scoping process, the draft EIR was noticed and available for a 48-day public comment period from May through June of 2026. The city received 14 comments on the draft EIR, which I'll discuss more in the upcoming slides. Next slide, please. Thank you. I would also like to highlight key findings from the draft EIR. A draft EIR was prepared at the program level to analyze the build-out, guiding principles, development standards, and implementation programs identified in the specific plan. The EIR examined the project against 20 topics pursuant to the CEQA guidelines. Four topics studied in the EIR, including air quality, biological resources, cultural resources, and greenhouse gas emissions, were determined to result in significant and unavoidable impacts notwithstanding implementation of mitigation. Regarding air quality, construction activities associated with future development accommodated by the specific plan, would generate short-term emissions and exceedance of the South Coast Air Quality Management Districts, or AQMD, threshold criteria. And long-term operation of the proposed project would generate emissions and exceedance of the South Coast AQMD threshold criteria and cumulatively contribute to the South Coast Air Basin's non-attainment designations. Regarding biological resources, construction and operation of the proposed project may have an impact on an aquatic resource which is associated with the human-made freshwater pond on the Costa Mesa Country Club golf course outside the project site but within an off-site improvement area. Regarding cultural resources, the proposed project would affect structures and outdoor features that contribute to the historic district designation associated with the FDC through their removal. As such, the proposed project would result in a substantial adverse change in the significance of a historical resource. And finally, regarding GHGs, operation of the proposed, or sorry, greenhouse gas emissions, or GHGs, operation of the proposed project would generate a cumulatively considerable increase in GHG emissions that would exceed South Coast AQMD working group bright line threshold. Next slide, please. With respect to alternatives, the alternatives evaluated in the draft EIR were selected in part for their potential to reduce or avoid the project's significant environmental impacts while attaining most of the basic project objectives. CEQA guidelines requires EIRs to identify any alternative that were considered but rejected as infeasible during the scoping process. Reasons alternatives may be rejected include failure to meet most of the basic project objectives, infeasibility, or inability to avoid significant environmental impacts. As such, alternatives that were considered but ultimately rejected included the alternative site, reduced density below housing element, full adaptive reuse, increased parkland, and removal of secondary access point alternatives. The following alternatives could potentially meet most project objectives and potentially reduce impacts. Under the no project, no development alternative, the project would not be approved and the site would remain unchanged. Under the no project alternative, the project would not be adopted, leaving no comprehensive planning framework or master developer for redevelopment. Under the partial adaptive reuse alternative, contributing FDC historic district features would be preserved to the extent feasible and incorporated into redevelopment. The partial adaptive reuse alternative was selected as environmentally superior because it would have similar impacts but reduce impacts to historic resources through preservation and reuse. Next slide, please. The final EIR has been posted in compliance with CEQA guidelines and includes responses to comments received during the public review period as well as additions and corrections based on responses to comments and any subsequent edits and changes to the specific plan as noted earlier in the presentation. Comments, as noted earlier, comments were received by seven agencies, three organizations and four individuals. Comments focused on cumulative impacts, aesthetics, air quality, biological resources, hazards, hydrology and water quality, land use, noise, population and housing, public services, parks and recreation, transportation, tribal cultural resources, utilities and alternatives. The comments, corrections, and additions included in the final EIR would not result in a significant new environmental impact not previously disclosed in the draft EIR. Additionally, none of the material indicates that there would be a substantial increase in the severity of a previously identified environmental impact that would not be mitigated or that there would be any other circumstances requiring recirculation described in CEQA's Guidelines section 15088.5. And with that, I'll turn it back to Melinda.

Thank you, Jennifer. So we'll go over some next steps. Right now, as you saw on the earlier screen, we are in phase four. And after planning commission hearing this evening and providing recommendations, next steps include city council meeting. And we are tentatively scheduled to have that meeting on September 15th. After all of this is done and adopted and the EIR certified by the City Council The next steps in the whole process would be the state to select the master developer that master developer would then take the lead to submit applications to the city for actual development on the ground and that will include an extensive application and review process and That is included within Chapter 8 of the specific plan. The master developer has to comply with the plan that has been created throughout this public engagement process, and as well as coordinating with the city to abstain all of their necessary permits to do development if they're going to subdivide, et cetera. With that, staff recommends that the Planning Commission adopt a resolution recommending that City Council take following actions to certify the CEQA environmental document and adopt the findings of fact the statement of overriding considerations and the mitigation monitoring reporting program adopt a resolution for the general plan amendments and adopt an ordinance for the zoning code amendments that we discussed earlier as well as staff is requesting that the Planning Commission also incorporate clarifications from the August 10th memo to the Planning Commission this evening THAT CONCLUDES STAFF'S PRESENTATION AND ARE AVAILABLE TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS.

ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. COMMISSIONERS, ANY QUESTIONS OF STAFF? COMMISSIONER DIXON.

WE HAVE A LETTER FROM SAFER, SUPPORTERS ALLIANCE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY. HAS STAFF HAD A CHANCE TO REVIEW THAT LETTER AND ADDRESS THE SPECIFIC CONCERNS THAT WERE RAISED REGARDING THE inadequacy of the responses and comments?

Yes, we did review the letter. I'll refer to Jennifer to respond to those comments. We had done the findings of fact for Planning Commission. It's included within the packet and that does explain that some of those issues that were raised in those letters that SAFER is also providing. Do not alter the analysis in the environmental document that has been conducted, but Jennifer can provide a little more detail if needed. Thank you.

Correct. Thank you, Melinda. Yes, as indicated in the presentation, there were no findings in the final EIR that would result in more severe impacts that were previously identified in the environmental impact report or result in different conclusions of the analysis that would change the ultimate conclusion of the impact. So in this case the the comments and edits and the additions and corrections made to the final EIR were refinements corrections minor typographical errors And nothing that would require recirculation pursuant to CEQA guidelines 15088.5

thank you if I may I'll just one excuse me I haven't talked in a while if I may I'll just add one more comment that we did receive an extensive letter from Cal OES and that's noted in this letter the public comment letter we did have a meeting with the Department of General Services CAL OES AS WELL AS CITY STAFF TO TALK THROUGH THEIR LETTER. THEY NOTED IT IN THEIR LETTER BUT SOME OF THEIR COMMENTS WEREN'T ACTUAL RESPONSES TO THE DRAFT EIR BUT JUST GENERAL COMMENTS THAT THEY WANTED TO MAKE SURE THEY CONTINUED TO WORK THROUGH WITH STAFF. SO WE HAD A MEETING, WE TALKED THROUGH THE COMMENTS, THEY UNDERSTOOD HOW WE WERE GOING TO RESPOND IN THE EIR BECAUSE WE RECEIVED A FULL LETTER OF COMMENTS WE HAD TO SAY THAT SOME OF THEM DON'T CONSTITUTE A CHANGE THAT REQUIRES ANY CIRCULATION OR NEW INFORMATION. But that we would continue to discuss with them, like, whether they need to activate an emergency, what that means. It might need to be done through a condition approval. There's certain things that might need to be done through a regulatory agreement. So at the time of entitlements, we would continue to have those conversations and work through some of the comments that they identified.

Okay. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I APPRECIATE THAT CLARIFICATION. I'M GOING TO WITHHOLD ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS UNTIL AFTERWARDS, BUT I JUST WANTED TO BRING THAT OUT RIGHT OFF THE BAT BECAUSE THAT WAS PRETTY SPECIFIC AND THERE ARE OTHER COMMENTS AS WELL IN HERE, BUT THAT WAS ONE I WANTED TO GET RIGHT OUT OF THE GATE. THANK YOU.

COMMISSIONERS, ANY OTHER QUESTIONS OF STAFF? VICE CHAIR ZICK, YOU'RE NOT ON YOUR HEAD.

You can go ahead you're present Just a couple of questions. Let me first follow up on Commissioner Dixon's question Using my understanding of what I think I heard you say You don't have to agree with my characterization, but it's a form it as a question what I heard you say is that the er er that we currently have which has concluded that that things are really bad, and in a number of cases, nothing we can do about it. What I hear you say is that the letters that have come in from organizations that have issues with the EIR, either because something wasn't looked at, wasn't looked at the way they thought it should be, whatever the flaw or concern is, your conclusion is it wouldn't make the bad things worse, therefore,

don't really need to deal with those comments is that what I'm hearing to clarify no new information was introduced to the record to the draft EIR through the comment letters that we received that would change the impact conclusions or the analysis to agree to a degree that would warrant recirculation of the draft EIR okay

Thank you. I think my understanding is correct then. Then a couple of shorter questions. Could you turn to page 24 of this presentation? Okay, what I thought I heard in the presentation by Placeworks was that the secondary access road would not be put in until such time as it was determined that it was needed based on the progress of development. But then on this slide, I see as part of your backbone phase two, that the secondary access road and golf course whole relocation occurs prior to phase three, which is the actual delivering of parcels for the beginning of construction. So could you clarify your statement and what appears to be a contradiction on this slide?

So the slide here is a consolidation of a lot of information. It's not necessarily meant to be in exact order. There are things that are going to happen simultaneously. In terms of the secondary access road, we've made it clear in the specific plan when that threshold hits, it will be required. We do expect development to be happening up until that point. So that's... There's no contradiction, it's just that on this slide we're not going through all the different iterations for how development could occur over time.

So then to be clear, if as this project begins and pads are formed and initial infrastructure starts going in, if the developer came to the city and said, you know, I'd really like to get started on the secondary access road, we would say no?

No, we would so very likely the developer will ask for a development agreement. We anticipate that will happen It's not a requirement. It's voluntary and That would be an opportunity for us to further discuss and identify the appropriate timeline But if a developer came forward and said we we want to build the secondary access at the forefront of the project in the timeline This that would be allowed with the cities though. There's flexibility in the plan to allow for that but there is a mechanism at that 2,300 unit that it has to be built.

Does that flexibility allow us to say no, that you have not yet built 2,300 units?

If the developer asks for a development agreement, it's an opportunity where we can negotiate and include a more specific timeline. So yes, there would be an ability for the city to say not within the first phase.

Thank you. Okay. Then page 26, if you could turn to that. Under the chapter 5 the first item when you were discussing this idea of the existing lease expiring new lease or lease extension being negotiated Do you happen to know? What the date is of the expiration of the current lease?

It's in December 2036. Thank you.

Okay. I was aware of it as well That's all I've got

All right. Commissioners, any other questions?

Yes. Commissioner Andrade? Yes. So along the questions or the conversation with Commissioner Zick about the traffic analysis, and thank you for including this and updating this. And I apologize, I lost track on the slide for the traffic analysis. based on what you presented and what's in the staff report page 1539 of our binder, once the project comes in, you know, should the project, when the project is accepted and processed with the number of anticipated units and development, it would bring us to the Pardon the LoS the level of service standards to a D which is defined as Approaching unstable so not unstable not heavy congestion or very low speeds But there will be significant delay and reduce speeds so I Guess where I'm going is It won't, and it's also, sorry, and in the top it says also LOSB. Can you tell me the difference between those two? Or A, oh, I see. In the morning, it'll be a B, which is stable flow with slight delays, minor restrictions, noticeable. So in the morning, flow would be as normal. Is that correct? On page 15 of the staff report?

Yes, during the AM peak travel periods with the intersection improvements, the LOS rating is B. It just goes down to a level D when it's the PM peak travel periods. So it's usually the time when people are getting off of work.

Getting off of work. OK. And it's approaching unstable. Not unstable yet, but approaching unstable. We're just right at the cusp, I would say. And that's at the time when folks are kind of coming home. That's helpful. And based on across the city, the D rating, the LOSD rating meets the minimum traffic standard for the city. Right? Are there other LOSDs that you can maybe point to that, you know, just to kind of associate because again, this is all so far in the future, you're trying to take us into the future. So help us vision this. Is there a currently existing LOSD that we can kind of put a parallel to this?

LOSD is the city's adopted minimum acceptable standards and then I'll defer to Paul Martin or Paul Herman if they want to provide an example of an intersection that currently operates at LOSD.

I'm I'm Paul Martin, the transportation services manager. So we're just looking at the traffic analysis. There were 26 intersections that were analyzed. The most comparable would be Harbor-Geisler, which is actually a level service C. So it's close to D. It's not quite there within the study area. LOSD might be more representative of some other intersections in the city, but I don't have that in my fingertips.

Okay. I think that would be helpful maybe for the next round once this goes to City Council because I know that's kind of as we see in the comments that's one of the peak concerns of our community is the level of traffic so understanding that there are already 26 existing areas that are within that C and D standard so this is something that we're familiar with right so something to be familiar with not to be afraid of concerned on the financial feasibility piece so again I just wanted to kind of clarify thank you you see I lost track of the slide numbers here but thank you for that so by reducing the number of units slightly we just kind of gain green space acreage and either five acres or two acres, depending on how much we go down, would that be kind of, how would that be allocated? Would that be an expansion of kind of the existing ones that you have identified in the, in the map or just, or, or is there a picture, you know, is a, which structure would kind of need to go down or reduced to see that potential trade off?

Um, Thank you, Commissioner Andrade. It's so high level. It's really difficult to say. We did our best to take a look at the acreage in those planning areas and identify how many units that were assumed as part of the land use concept that was put together and what that potential trade-off might be, just so you could have some sort of spectrum to sort of analyze that relationship. But open space is flexible in the plan. It could be accommodated a number of ways. So it's not to say that YOU KNOW, YOU NEED TO NECESSARILY REDUCE UNITS IN ORDER TO INCREASE OPEN SPACE IF IT CAN BE PROVIDED WITHIN THE DEVELOPMENT, ON THE ROOF. SO THERE'S OTHER OPPORTUNITIES THAT COULD POTENTIALLY GET ABOVE 14 EVEN WITHOUT A REDUCTION IN UNITS.

OKAY. SO WE DON'T NECESSARILY HAVE TO GIVE UP ON UNITS TO INCREASE THE OPEN SPACE, RIGHT, BECAUSE THERE'S CREATIVE ALTERNATIVES. OKAY. AND AGAIN, IT LOOKS LIKE IN THIS ROUND OF THE REPORT, THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF Projected units is the one is the is the estimate that is most feasible for a developer to come in, right? And I assume obviously this is with conversations with developers in the community. So okay, so this is based on conversations with experts in the field Yes, correct it's based on the financial feasibility analysis which included extensive

analysis, interviews, discussions with both affordable and market rate developers to ensure that our modeling was accurate and up-to-date.

Okay. Along the conversations of CEQA, thank you for addressing the comments of the letter that we received. So basically, right, most of the things that were raised have already been addressed in the report. I really did appreciate to hear the follow-up of that. as the project goes forward or develops, there is opportunities to have evaluation, to increase greater safety as construction starts to go up. So there could be at points where the developer can help mitigate some of these concerns. OK. And just high level, say everything works out great. Plan is approved. It goes through city council. Picture in the sky, again, I know this is looking far ahead, maybe like a decade. How far ahead are we looking for completion? I know in the last presentation we saw phases that went from 2030, 2040. What's kind of like the timeline where you would foresee that this whole project would be completed?

Our best guess in the financial feasibility analysis estimated somewhere between 12 and 20 years, but very likely in the 18-year range for completion of the entire development, up to 4,000 units. Yeah.

My kid is 10 now. She ought to be like 28 years old. And hopefully she can afford a unit in here. OK, so we're really kind of projecting really far ahead. So this is an opportunity for us to build for Costa Mesa 2.0, way out in the future for my daughter when she's a full-grown adult. Um, right now she's in elementary school, so far, far ahead. So, um, appreciate all the great work that is going into this. I mean, again, to have an opportunity to think build for the future, um, is really exciting. Um, but I appreciate all the caution and creativity that we're taking here now. Um, so. public knowledge, Costa Mesa is under scrutiny about our housing requirements and meeting, and this project will help us address a big portion of that. What would happen if, you know, city council, you know, if this project continues to be kind of kicked down the road, further and further down, what would be kind of the fiscal impact to the city to continue to not meet the requirements? Because I know that this approval of this project would help us address in that lawsuit that we have going on. Right. So can you help me address like if we do nothing and keep kicking it down the road for more evaluations, more evaluations, what happens?

Yeah. Thank you, commissioner Andrade. So for the benefit of the public, um, what you're referring to is the attorney general filing, um, that happened on July 16th, um, that gave the city 120 days to, um, IDENTIFY ENOUGH HOUSING ELEMENT SITES FOR RENA CAPACITY, REGIONAL HOUSING NEEDS ASSESSMENT ALLOCATION AND REZONE ALL OF THOSE SITES. FDC IS A HOUSING ELEMENT SITE. IT DOES NEED TO BE REZONED IN ORDER TO GET HOUSING ELEMENT CERTIFICATION. SO IF THE CITY DOES NOT TAKE ACTION AND DOES NOT ADOPT A SPECIFIC PLAN OR REZONE THAT SITE IN The city will not achieve housing element certification. What would happen after that 120 days? I'm not totally sure. I might refer to the city assistant city attorney on that one, but it's very likely that there would be continued legal action of some sort.

And also, if I could, Commissioner Andrade, if I could add on to that. The city has a contract with the state of California for the local planning process for the Fairview Developmental Center specific plan. That time horizon for that contract originally was, let's see, it was September of 2025. AND THE CITY WAS GRANTED AN EXTENSION TO THE END OF THIS YEAR, DECEMBER 2026. IN THAT CONTRACT, I THINK, AND IT TALKS ABOUT IN THE STAFF REPORT, BUT THE CITY WAS PROVIDED THE OPPORTUNITY AND A $3.5 MILLION GRANT TO OVERSEE THE COMMUNITY OUTREACH AND LOCAL PLANNING PROCESS FOR THE FAIR VIEW DEVELOPMENTAL CENTER SPECIFIC PLAN. This being a state-owned property with state-level ability to dispose of, one of the what-ifs to the question of what happens if this specific plan doesn't happen is that the state can also take another action through legislation for a disposition process. off on its own track not necessarily following a local planning process so i wanted to give you a little bit of broader framework beyond just the importance of the housing element timeline is that we also have this unique contractual obligation with the state and also that this being a state-owned property we've seen as you saw earlier in the slide three different state legislation actions that directly affected land uses FOR EXAMPLE, THE SUPPORTIVE HOUSING ON HERE. THE STATE DOES HAVE THE ABILITY TO DO THAT, AND SO WE ARE IN THIS LOCAL PLANNING PROCESS, AND IF WE DON'T FINISH IT, I DON'T REALLY KNOW WHAT OTHER OPTIONS WE WOULD HAVE IF THE STATE WERE TO GO OFF ON ITS OWN PATH. THANK YOU.

OKAY.

THANK YOU. SO IF I COULD JUST REFRAME IN LAYMAN'S TERMS. SO WE'RE IN A CONTRACT WITH THE STATE. OUR CONTRACT HAS ENDED IN SEPTEMBER 25. THEY GAVE US AN EXTENSION TO to get this done, to get our ducks in a row. So Costa Mesa can do its work. We even received a grant to do the study, to evaluate, get the community feedback, get all the input, to get this project moving. And you're saying that based on precedent, there is an opportunity. If we don't meet the contractual obligations that we have with the state, Essentially, the state could say, well, okay, Costa Mesa, you couldn't come up with a solution. We're just going to move forward and decide for you, right? Kind of they decide what to do. So this is kind of, this is, not kind of, is our opportunity to determine what do we want to see, what does it want to look like, what do we want to envision, like we said, for our children, our grandkids in 20 years, right? So... Pretty big decision, right? Because the alternative could be a huge loss of control. And I don't think anybody in the city wants to lose control on what our city looks like, what is our traffic mitigation going to be, how many parks are we going to get, how many housing opportunities are we going to be able to develop. again what is going to be the future of our city so there's a lot weighing on this and i appreciate that by the heaviness of this binder and i know the extensive time that you all have taken so um that's it for now thank you thank you

Before we get to Commissioner Martinez, who I believe is back on Zoom, I just have one quick question, more clarification for the city attorney. So Ms. McGill mentioned that the complaint was filed by the Attorney General, and there's, I guess, a proposed 120-day period to remedy this. That doesn't mean we're under any kind of court order to do that, where the clock has not started ticking. I just want the public to be clear about where we are in that litigation.

Thank you, Chair Harlan. That is accurate. We are not under any court order. The litigation has not been adjudicated. There is no pending court order. There will eventually be a court order at some point, one way or the other, but there is nothing pending at the moment.

Okay, great. Thank you. Commissioner Martinez, are you back on?

Yes, sir.

Okay. I know you have questions, so you have the floor.

Thank you. I think first, I just want to do a very broad overview, high level timeline question. So I know we said that if this gets approved, it goes to city council. And then from there, a master developer will be chosen by the state. So after that is done, if that's done, I'd like for staff to explain not just what happens from there, because what happens would be the specific plan gets implemented, if it gets approved. But the timeline of when that happens, and then ending with, what is the endpoint of full build out? When would we expect this entire project to be completed?

Thank you, Commissioner Martinez, for that question. The specific plan document itself is a long-range planning document, which can be in effect for 25 years. Ana previously answered a question about the financial feasibility, indicating that it was around 12 to 20 years for implementation, but the analysis identified 18 years as approximate time for completing construction.

All right, so we're looking at an 18-year time scale, not next year. OK, the broad one, and then I'll just do one very specific one. The staff report provided a link to the track edits For the FTCSP, first I'd like to thank staff very much for taking a lot of my comments from last meeting and making the corresponding edits. And so thank you, staff. The one, I'll say final for now, one that I just addressed is in who maintains the utility systems, the track edits still identify the city. or the association. And I wanted clarity as to why would the city maintain the water system if Mesa Water owns it? Why would the city maintain the sewer system if Costa Mesa Sanitary District owns it?

Commissioner Martinez, this is Sun Yang, city engineer. I was just going to mention that if it If Mesa Water District owns its own facility, it will be the responsibility of Mesa Water to maintain it. And that will be true with the sewer system as well, if it's constructed and built by Coastal Mesa Sanitary District. It won't be the city's responsibility, it will be the district's responsibility to maintain it.

Okay. In that case, I'll have comments and we'll edit later. Those are my questions. A lot of my questions were answered at the previous meeting. So I'd like to thank staff very much for that. And I'll end. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Commissioner Martinez. Commissioner Dixon. Very quick.

So for the the conceptual site plan, in a specific plan, if you could just for the public's understanding, explain conceptual site plan is PERSPECTIVE IT'S NOT SET IN STONE THERE'S NOT GOING TO BE A BASEBALL DIAMOND THERE THERE'S NOT GOING TO BE THESE SPECIFIC BUILDINGS NECESSARILY IN THAT SPECIFIC LOCATION ET CETERA RIGHT BECAUSE I KNOW I KNOW WE TALKED ABOUT SPORTS FIELDS BEFORE AND THAT WAS KIND OF SHOT DOWN BY THE STATE SAYING WE COULDN'T REALLY HAVE A SPORTS COMPLEX BUT I JUST I JUST WANT FOLKS BEFORE THE COMMENTS BEFORE THEY COMMENT TO UNDERSTAND A WHAT THE CONCEPTUAL SITE PLAN IS FOR INSTANCE THERE'S THE DGS HOUSING UP IN THE TOP THAT SHOWS A BUNCH OF SURFACE PARKING BUT THERE'S ZERO SURFACE PARKING IN

Our specific plan area that doesn't mean that's the way it is or the way it's going to be that's just this conceptual cycling That's the first thing and then Is that is correct it is conceptual it is our best guess on what it could look like based on the Backbone Road infrastructure and the walkability of the community that's proposed currently great great.

Thank you, and then the I THINK THAT'S GOOD FOR RIGHT NOW. I JUST WANTED TO CLARIFY THAT. AND THEN THAT'S GOOD FOR RIGHT NOW. I'LL GET MORE COMMENTS LATER. THANKS.

OKAY. IF THERE'S NO MORE COMMISSIONER QUESTIONS OF STAFF, GO AHEAD.

SO ON PAGE 5 OF THE STAFF REPORT, CONCEPT 2 FOR 3450 UNITS, IT SHOWS AN IRR OF 14.6%, WHICH IS A VERY HEALTHY RETURN. but it shows about a $5 million gap in project financing. Could you explain in layman's terms what that means and what are some ways in which the developer might be able to mitigate that?

So the $5 million in financing gap is there's not enough internal rate of return for the developer at the 3450 ratio. However, that could be made up through tax credit financing or potentially the state gifting some money to a master developer. However, the alternatives that are indicated in the staff report and the presentation this evening, we're recommending somewhere between $3,500, $3,800 if there's a unit reduction. That $3,500 unit will kind of get the developer out of that $5 million financing gap.

And can they also get bridge loans or bring some of their own money to the table?

Yeah, absolutely. There'd be a lot of different ways in which they could finance the project over long term. Really simply, that $5 million is like the difference between 4.6% and 15%, just to make it crystal clear, as is our best guess, right? So a developer who incorporates more for sale units might be able to take that same unit count and make it financially feasible and put it over that 15%. It really just depends on the product type and the makeup. We don't usually, we're not usually privy to a lot of their performance, unfortunately. It'd be great if we could be, then we'd know this information a little bit better. But again, I'll keep saying this is our crystal ball. It's our best guess at sort of trying to determine what might be financially feasible.

Thank you.

Okay. If there are no more commissioner questions. Commissioner Andrade. Okay.

WOULD THIS PROJECT FALL WITHIN THE WORKFORCE AGREEMENT THAT THE CITY HAS BECAUSE IT'S TECHNICALLY A CITY PROJECT?

COMMISSIONER ANDRATE, ARE YOU REFERRING TO THE COMMUNITY WORKFORCE AGREEMENT?

YES. THAT'S THE MISSING ONE WORD. THANK YOU.

YES. FOR THIS PARTICULAR PROJECT, NO. IT'S NOT UNDER THE LIST IN THE CURRENT CONTRACT WITH THE

Organization so this wouldn't be under the community workforce agreement Is there an opportunity to include that in the proposal for a developer? I'm just again thinking this could be a great opportunity to employ a lot of custom essence Well, this is going up. Is that something that we can include in that as we're exploring? proposals for developers

It will be a private development project. However, the affordable housing if they obtain low-income housing tax credits They may they're most likely going to be required to do skilled and trained workforce requirements based on the financing criteria Okay, thank you Are we good

okay on the parks i'm sorry i forgot to ask this on the last one all right commissioner when we were talking about in lieu fees and park dedications and land purchases and things like that just that's not within the specific plan area right is that citywide or is that within the specific plan area so the specific plan has a short-term implementation action for the city to

do a nexus study for the specific project, which will identify all the applicable fees that a future master developer would be subject to paying for this project. There are park and loo fees that are applicable on North Coast of Mesa as well as citywide, and there are other fire impact fees for North Coast of Mesa, but this project will have a nexus study for its own fee system.

Because we're talking about open space within the specific plan area, but the compensation for that could be open space in some other location in the city. Is

If I could clarify, I think I understand the question, Commissioner Dixon. The proposed regulations in this specific plan apply obviously only to development in this specific plan, but if the city were to collect in lieu fees, those in lieu fees could be used both within or outside of, just because this neighborhood, this new neighborhood would be part of the city, but there would need to be some analysis and relationship to ensure that the improvements go to serve the immediate area, for example. But it would be needs-based, and that would ultimately be part of the parks planning process that the city currently goes through to assess where the parks' needs are.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I just wanted to clarify that before the public has a chance to weigh in.

Okay, thank you everyone for your patience. I will now open public comments. So if you would like to speak, please come to either podium. I'd encourage you to line up so we can do this as efficiently as possible. Everyone will have three minutes. However, I encourage you, if somebody has already said exactly what you're thinking, please be brief in your comments.

All right, on my left, sir, go right ahead. Sure, good evening. This is my ninth meeting or workshop that I've attended. We haven't seen material responses to our popular concerns, which in itself is a concern. We've watched many of us ask questions in the open sessions and had very few answered. We deserve answers at a minimum. The awareness level of this project is alarming and incredibly weak compared to the planning docs that have been prepared. I live in College Park, one block from this massive project, and no one around me knows what's about to happen. If anyone there were to know that 135 foot buildings were being proposed, this room would be shoulder to shoulder with people. At 4,000 units, should California step in, would their plan be any worse than this? This is as personal as it gets, and unfortunately we are losing faith. We'd like to understand the oversight process regardless of what the decision is made. We are looking to you to represent our best interests, matching how all of us here have taken care of and invested in our beloved city and made this an attractive place to build anything. Thank you.

Thank you. Go ahead.

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Scott Grady. I'm a Costa Mesa property owner and a commercial real estate executive with 25 years of experience in the business. The city's own fact sheet on this specific plan says that after studying Merrimack Way as a secondary access point, staff concluded, I quote, it must remain private and can only be used for emergency access. end quote, because it sits inside of a land lease with the Harbor Village operator. That didn't sit right with me, so I filed a PRA, which I sent to you all. What I found is in the letter that I submitted to you tonight, I asked that each of you take the time to read it in full, and noting that I did read the 174-page lease this weekend and its 10 amendments, and all the correspondence between the state and staff on this matter. First, Merrimack Way has been active in use since at least 1965, 16 years before Harbor Village lease was signed, decades before Harbor Village Apartments existed. I've got a copy of a 1965 USGS survey, if you'd like it. It shows Merrimack Way serving the Fairview State Hospital campus The lease did not create this road. Exhibit A to the lease recognized a road that was already there serving Fairview Developmental Center. The road came first. This isn't just my reading of an old map. In a March 2024 coordination call, the state's own Department of Developmental Services said on record in a document sent to me by the city that it believes there may be a public easement over this road. And the question still needed to be confirmed. That's what it said. It was apparently never resolved. Third, there were only about 10 years left on the Harbor Village ground lease, a 55-year lease that expires in 2036. That's well within the window the city itself expects for this build-out. So I ask that you have the city attorney look closely at this lease, and the city needs to engage meaningfully with the state to use Merrimack Way as a secondary access road. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, Tim Cromwell. I live in Costa Mesa on Swan Drive. I'm just afraid we're moving way too fast on this, and I keep hearing 4,000 units, so we might be able to do it in 3,500. That's crazy density. I'm all for providing affordable housing. We just need to create a project that fits all of Costa Mesa's residents, and they would be happy to live in it or they'd be happy to have them as a neighboring project. I also would absolutely stop any idea of selling or giving away any of the golf course. You've got a beautiful asset in our city that's constantly used, and why would we remove beautiful landscape that's making money for Costa Mesa to help something else. I think this project should be similar to the height limit and density of all the surrounding neighborhoods. I'm also wondering, I rode by on a bike today with my wife just to check this out, and I'm looking at all of the buffering, bordering Costa Mesa Country Club, why wouldn't you put some nice project two or three story golf view condos around that and it could help write down the cost of some of the remaining land and then maybe you can have more affordable units. Traffic is insane. It will be insane on Harbor Boulevard. If it could ever cause the closure of any auto dealers, We'd be crazy. That's huge tax revenue that we lose. And then the poor neighbors and the upper birds of Mesa Verde, they're going to get a ton of pass-through traffic that will come through Mesa Verde when they can't get out on harbor. Does that mean my time is up? No, you've got another minute. Oh, I've got another minute? Well, I heard a good joke today. Now, thank you very much.

All right, thank you.

Good evening commissioners. My name is Perry Clitheroe and thank you for hearing me out tonight. I'm here today to urge you to adopt the Fairview Developmental Center specific plan. There is a huge housing shortage in California. This shortage has caused the cost of homes and rents to skyrocket, driving away many renters and aspiring homeowners. I have many friends and family members who have left Southern California not because they didn't work hard enough, but because their work wasn't able to put a roof over their heads. These people have included teachers, police officers, business owners, nurses and more. They aren't deadbeats. They're working class Californians, taxpayers and renters. And they've been fighting a rigged system. They've been fighting a rigged system. And I use that word deliberately. Adam Smith, describing how free markets address shortages, described the invisible hand. Shortages cause prices to rise. which attracts investments from businesses who produce the good or service that is needed. And as they fill the shortage, prices fall back to an equitable and healthy place, and everybody has what they need. California's housing market is rigged by municipal zoning laws, where people have centrally planned housing and land use in their decision, every single city in the state, and they have overwhelmingly said no to new developments because that's what every neighbor wants in every city in California. They've gotten in the way of this free market function, and these laws have created the shortage. I'm sympathetic to planning commissions and city councils. Here tonight, you're going to hear from a few dozen angry neighbors. And tonight, they outnumber the thousands of families who will benefit from this project. It's the reality you guys have dealt with. I'm sympathetic to it. I think you guys get where I'm coming from at this point, but I'll close with one last observation. In the presentation, it was stated that this project was started in response to state law. Staff isn't wrong, but that's like saying that a drunk who crashes their car into a tree did so because they swerved too hard. It's true, but it's not the most important factor. The housing element was passed because every single city in California has criminalized upzoning and infill development. Reagan and the Republican Party passed this housing element back in the 60s because they foresaw this problem. These laws aren't new, but the housing shortage has intensified in the last 10 to 20 years, and the housing shortage and the pain and suffering it's causing is why people began to work on this project. Blaming Sacramento just makes it look like you guys haven't noticed how hard it's become to find housing here in Costa Mesa. Thank you for listening to me tonight, and thank you for your public service. Have a good day. Thank you.

All right, go ahead. Good evening, commissioners. I want to make a few comments. I want to start out specifically speaking about financial feasibility as a reminder for those who haven't told. My background is master plan community development. I'm not anti-housing. I'm anti-bad plans. I want to talk about feasibility and the number one way to get the IRR up so you can get a better project. is one, getting rid of the backbone development requirement for the secondary access through the golf course. If you can go through Merrimack, you'll significantly decrease the cost for the project. Clearly, this option has not been explored enough. Thank you, Mr. Grady, for bringing those comments up. Secondarily, I've worked on countless projects where you're allowed to hit your affordable requirement project by buying existing market rate units and deed restricting them. The comment earlier, there was a comment regarding affordable housing having a skilled labor requirement. That costed a typical affordable housing unit to cost about a million dollars per unit to buy. You can buy an on-market market rate unit for $500,000 per unit in Mesa Verde right now. You can deed restrict it. decrease the cost on the project. There are other options to still provide affordable housing, but not jam it all into one space, creating all these downstream effects. This last weekend, I went and passed out a bunch of flyers about Fairview Development Center and College Park. Two big takeaways I got. No one knows what's going on, and no one supports it. We have... If you drive down Princeton, go see how many makeshift stop signs there are for people who are afraid for their children's lives when they go out in their front yard because of how the traffic is now. Add in 20,000 cars, coming in, they are going to cut through Princeton. The traffic study does not look at neighborhood streets. It doesn't look at the road in Cornerstone, where people already can't get out of their neighborhood in less than 20 minutes. It doesn't look at the people on Princeton. It doesn't look at the people in Fordham. It doesn't look at any of the streets of any of the people in the neighborhoods who are actually being impacted. And I'm sorry, bare minimum standard is not an acceptable standard. We can do better. We just need to actually explore real feasible options. to create a more economically feasible project if we don't do the secondary back access which no one wants through the golf course we put pressure to get it through merrimack we bring the cost down we move some of the affordable off-site which is legal we can make this project economically feasible and not destroy our community no one's saying no homes they're saying don't destroy our community that's all we're saying thank you for your consideration all right

All right, I appreciate everybody's enthusiasm. However, let's hold any applause, and quite honestly, we don't really need applause until the very end. I'll give you like 10 seconds, but I want to get through everybody's public comment. All right, go ahead.

Well, I'm not angry, but I am concerned. I was just hoping to add, I know there's a lot going on here, and I just wanted to add another facet or optic to the whole situation. Good evening, members of the city council. My name is Scott Tarnow. I'm a resident of Costa Mesa as well as a high school teacher for Newport Mesa Unified at Newport Harbor High School, and I coach the high school golf teams. I'm here tonight on behalf of the hundreds of student athletes, parents, and coaches who rely heavily on the Mesa Linda Golf Course. We understand the city's need for growth and new development. However, the current proposal to run an access road directly through Mesa Linda would effectively shut down a vital community asset, leaving our youth with nowhere else to go. Mesa Linda is not just a patch of green grass. It's an absolute lifeblood of junior golf in this area. And there's several reasons for this. First of all, we have at least 10 local schools and surrounding high schools that use this course for practice and matches. In recent years, the private country clubs in the area have essentially eliminated the junior golf access. Mesa Linda is quite literally the last standing pillar for affordable, accessible youth golf in our community. And they've been absolutely incredible for all of the surrounding schools. And its unique layout is built for the kids. The course is suited for the high school teams because the ninth hole finishes in as far from the clubhouse as possible. And our student athletes can tee off late in the afternoons, walk the course, finish, and then walk back in the dark without disrupting the general public, where most of the time they want to go to the other golf course. So the adult players naturally gravitate to the other course because it finishes at the clubhouse. So it's a perfect harmonious system that you cannot replicate anywhere else. When Mesa Linda isn't hosting teenagers, learning life lessons about integrity and discipline, it's packed with local residents. It's a highly utilized revenue generating and deeply loved public course. If this access road cuts through the course, our junior golfers will have zero alternatives to practice or play their matches. The sport will effectively be wiped out for public school kids in the area. And then personally, and for other people in the area, I mean, Mesa Linda is packed. year-round, all day long, easily doing 75,000 rounds a year. It's one of the busiest in Southern California, according to the SCGA. And it's one of the most played golf courses in Orange County. So I'm not asking for you to stop development altogether. We're simply asking for you to protect our kids, our public spaces, consider alternative routing options for the new developments access road that bypassed the golf course entirely. Let's find a solution that allows our city to grow without sacrificing the future of our youth. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. A little better, but let's hold it. All right, go ahead.

Good evening, Chair and Commissioners. I'm here on behalf of the Canadian Commission to express our support for the Fairview Developmental Center-specific plan. We are an organization that advocates for affordable housing throughout Orange County through policy work and community engagement. Costa Mesa continues to face a serious housing shortage. This shortage affects young families, seniors, teachers, healthcare workers, and so many others who help this COMMUNITY BE STRONG. EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO LIVE IN COMMUNITIES WHERE THEIR WORK RAISES THEIR FAMILIES AND BUILDS THEIR LIVES. THE CITY SHOULD PURSUE AFFORDABLE HOUSING OPPORTUNITIES TO THE GREATEST EXTENT FEASIBLE. LIKE MENTIONED BEFORE, THIS SITS ON A HOUSING ALLAMENT SITE AND REALLY PROVIDES COSTA MESA WITH A MEANINGFUL OPPORTUNITY TO MEET ITS OBLIGATIONS. Expanding affordable housing, including permanent supportive housing, can provide more equitable opportunities for working families, seniors, and people with disabilities who are increasingly being priced out of Orange County. Lower income households continue to experience disproportionate rates of housing cost burden and overcrowding. For these reasons, we respectfully urge the Planning Commission to recommend approval of the draft Fairview Developmental Center-specific plan and to maximize affordable housing opportunities within the plan. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, go ahead.

All right, Natalie King, 42-year resident of Costa Mesa, third generation. I know everybody has been talking about the traffic, so I'm not going to spend my time on that. I just want to mention, though, one key thing is that I live in Mesa Del Mar. We have five major exits. Those five major exits for 2,630 units, those are single-family homes mixed with... Apartments, duplexes, now ADUs, and those exit onto Newport Boulevard. We have Junipero that takes you out to Arlington. We also have Adams to Fairview, and then we have Baker, and also Bear, which is a side street that takes you to the 5573. So I just, I'm really hesitant with this whole Harbor Boulevard, Merrimack, Harbor Center Drive, and Fair Drive, all within a .3 mile radius of each other. All landing onto Harbor Boulevard. Those families, if we have families that live in this community, hopefully we do, because that's what we're all about in Costa Mesa, right, with all of our communities. College Park, Polarino, Hellcrest. I just feel like all those communities have one key thing, a school, right? We have parks. Some of them have small little pocket parks, we call them, but we have T-Minkle Park. And I just feel like we're gonna be landlocked inside that little community there, and you're not going to have a school. So where are those parents going to take their kids? They're going to drive up Fair Drive to College Park? Are they going to wrap around and go to Adams? Are they going to go to the back side and take them into Victoria? Probably not. No one wants to drive down Victoria. So I think when Andrade is mentioning about obligation to our children and what we're going to see for our future in Costa Mesa, We got to look at how is this community going to thrive? How are they going to have recreation for their kids? I think the recreation, my daughter's 10. She plays flag football, softball, baseball. She did Costa Mesa Little League. She does golf and swims, plays soccer. And all of our fields are locked up. My kid can't even go to an elementary school to play a game because they're locked up. Jack Hammett is by the city. Used to be the farm when I was a kid. We can't even go there to kick a ball around. It's locked up. I just don't understand why we can't have a sports complex here. All these kids are having to drive now with their leagues down to the Great Park in Irvine. What are we going to do when we have 4,000 units in this community with children? Where are they going to play sports? Where are they going to go? out and just go kick a ball with their friends. We took Kona lanes away. We took ice capades away. We've taken all the great things in our community away. And now we're going to build huge homes again. All right.

Don't make me warn you again.

All right. Go ahead. Good evening commissioners and staff my name is Aaron clam and I've lived in Westside Costa Mesa since 2010. The FTC specific plan should be approved tonight to support the housing element. The city accepted the law covering FTC with the funding and its public engagement and planning process and that process was followed. The state is a superior level of government and the laws on their side. However, Jen Tanaka's posted analysis of the FTC specific plan plainly describes deficiencies that have not been addressed. I share her concerns. However, for tonight's agenda item, that ship has sailed. This difficult vote is a consequence of defying and or neglecting state housing law. We should stop doing that. Huntington Beach has wasted millions of dollars and lost every one of their housing lawsuits. Costa Mesa should not repeat those mistakes. We are facing a set of consequences that could mean fines, losing land use planning authority, including our sober living ordinance due to the AG lawsuit. The city needs to take decisive and prompt action to complete sufficient housing element upzonings to get into compliance. This would remove the lawsuit threat against Costa Mesa and help protect our sober living ordinance. For opponents of this project, this project's economic feasibility is largely determined by the scarcity of entitled housing projects in Costa Mesa. The city, for now, has land use authority and can remove this government-imposed scarcity. Current and future city council members, their appointees, and the city manager should immediately and dramatically increase the quantity of zoned capacity for housing that can make this project uneconomic to build. There has never been a perfect balance of targeted upzoning with the right combination of millions of dollars, words, community engagement, and listening tours that will prevent a backlash like you're enjoying tonight. However, state law requires that we upzone. The best option now is Strongtown's principle that no neighborhood should be subject to radical change and no neighborhood can be exempt from change. To achieve this, Strong Towns recommends blanket upzoning everywhere up to the next increment of development using by-right approvals. Until this city gets into housing element compliance, there will be more meetings like this with unpopular votes. Costa Mesa should lean into the many benefits of housing abundance, such as allowing people to exercise their private property rights with less government interference, increased property tax revenue from redevelopment properties, and our children being able to live in Costa Mesa. The final benefit will be that this particular project with its specific plan shortcomings may not get built. Thank you.

Hello, good evening commissioners. My name is Steve Smith. I'm here to speak against the Fairview development plan as proposed. My feeling is that we're really putting the cart before the horse here right now and we don't have a very well thought out plan. I think that's pretty clear to everyone. The traffic is just one issue in addition to other things like the way the schools and the water as well. We've really put We've really enveloped ourselves into a lot of closed-loop situations, and we don't have a good way out of them, and there's a lot of unanswered questions that we're still going to have to address as we go. And again, I said this before to you all last time, we're going to be chasing the consequences of this plan for a very, very long time. As you've heard from countless people here tonight, I won't go through those again. Please consider thoughtful revisions, which will make this plan better for Costa Mesa. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Mary Ann Plunkett. I am a 26-year resident homeowner in Mesa Verde. I object to this plan. I have great concerns over the ratio of ultra-low income. And I also noticed when we had sober living, we magically had 250 sober living sites. Numerous of them were in my particular neighborhood. and the increase in crime was quite significant, including drug dealing, theft, and armed robbery. So with respect to the impact this plan of having 4,000 units, one quarter of which will be for ultra-low-income housing, I have great concerns for the drain on the police force as well as other public services. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the Commission. I'm Kevin Fitzgerald. I'm the Director of Public Affairs with the Southern California Golf Association and appreciate the opportunity to present a few thoughts that maybe just haven't quite been in the record. You know, we're certainly not here to talk about housing developments and so on, just here to provide a bit of a golf perspective. Unfortunately, from experience, we would look at this secondary access road as less than ideal for the impact on the golf course. Thrilled to read through all the materials from staff that suggest that the city is looking to increase the total number of housing units and also, at the same time, mitigate the impact on the golf courses. I think we were thrilled to see that there was a long-term commitment to continuing to provide affordable, accessible golf to the residents here. Our concern is that a few holes being isolated longer term, that project appears, from our understanding, that it would fall in the hands of the developer to determine how the road would go through the golf course and ultimately pay for that project. I think it's been overlooked somewhat just how infeasible that project appears to be. A few golf holes when they're isolated, it will probably be a 15 plus million dollar project from what we've seen. I mean, there are so many questions outstanding about how you would continue to have access to those holes. So there have been a number of, I think, very interesting questions raised about exactly where a second access road would be. would be possible while continuing to provide 36 holes, since that was a priority. And ultimately, I think what we've heard through a number of these opportunities to provide input is that there has been a hope and trust that this will all work itself out over time. And I think ultimately we're just very concerned that we haven't turned over every rock as to where that second access road could go that would allow for the facility to continue to remain affordable, accessible, and 36 holes. So I appreciate the opportunity to participate in some of these public outreach opportunities. And thank you for your consideration as we look forward to where this goes from here.

Thank you.

Good evening, Chair Harlan and commissioners. My name is Christine Nolth. I'm a 50-year Costa Mesa resident now and a local pastor. And I think what I'd like to do with my comments is just kind of remind us of a few things. And... and maybe clarify some things too for our neighbors. I want to thank the staff for the process. This was in no way in my understanding, in my experience personally, a quick process. I've been involved in these communities for years, in these conversations for years. I received emails, postcards to my home, notifications by following Costa Mesa on Facebook and Instagram. So I want to thank the staff. The workshops I participated in had more people participating than I've seen in any workshops that I've been a part of over the years. I'm a part of the Costa Mesa Affordable Housing Coalition, and I urge you to adopt the plan. We have been bringing the needs of families for affordable housing for the last 20 years to the council. Our main obstacle has been and what's been told to us is that we can't build affordable housing because there's not enough land and there's not political will for it. This project presents the solution to the first obstacle and what I've heard tonight and some of the comments is similar to what we've heard before. I'm not against housing but I don't want it here. We know that I don't have to explain to the Planning Commission that we don't have places to build things. This is an opportunity that we have on the state land to do what the state has mandated, and I want to encourage you to please adopt this plan. I also want to just clarify for my neighbors when we're talking... Talking about affordable housing, the term homelessness has come up a lot, and I don't know if people really understand that affordable housing, this project would not be all affordable. And also that we're talking about people who are making $148,000 a year. It's been mentioned these are working people who are already working in our community and contributing in many ways. I think it's important to bring that up again. Also, I was at the first community meeting when we first gathered, and affordable, everyone was like, rah, rah, rah, let's do affordable housing. I was like, this is amazing, this is gonna be easy. And so I guess I'm really saddened to see that we've come to this place where we're fighting against that again. And I understand the challenges, but I think that we're creative people, and we can work that out. And I'll just end by saying, really, as a follower of Jesus Christ, I'm here because I have a duty to advocate not only for my own necessities and my own comfort, but for the needs of those who are marginalized. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, my name's Kevin Crone. This is only my third time ever participating in public politics. Thank you for having me. Shame it's under these circumstances. I just wanted to phrase a little bit of concern because I feel like I was at one of the workshops and it was, were 40 whatever hundred units, no matter what, and now I'm seeing that there's like concessions for unit count for green space so it's great that we're working i guess on the agenda of the of the community but i think some of the phrasing in literally everything i read is really harsh for our community to be reading because it seems like we're maybe working for the consultant rather than the consultant working for us it just no offense to them i just it just seems like we're just kind of taking what's coming our way. And then when we see a concession in the presentation, like we're happy about it, even though I think we're the ones paying for it. And then in terms of the financial feasibility, isn't this project like hundreds of millions of dollars and we're negative by 5 million. That's like a rounding error on the interest rate. I think it would be great to know what type of, transparently the package that's set up that we're modeling for this development to understand the financial metrics, to understand the study in a way that maybe is more approachable for the community instead of just maybe the real estate professionals in the room who seem to be commenting that the financial feasibility is lacking incredible detail, especially for this room that's never been more full in the three times I've been here. I think there needs to be a lot more consideration for the 50 or whatever homes in Cornerstone. That's a left turn only across four lanes of traffic every morning. I mean, I think that speaks for itself. For anyone who doesn't know what 5,000 square feet is, that's one Apple store. One Apple store for 4,000 units. is an abdication and neglect of responsibility for whoever votes people into office that makes these decisions of which I'm still learning about. I think more also needs to be considered for police and fire coverage. I think we need a study on wait times for all emergency services and an impact on wait times for said services. I've been in cities where they don't think about growth plans, and you're waiting. I've literally called 911 before in another city not to be named under a certain kind of tough growth instance, and you're waiting over 10 minutes to even get a callback from, or not a callback, but a response from emergency services. And then considering this project is forever, we should be thinking about a long-term...

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Mary Hannah. I'm a 58-year-old resident of Costa Mesa. Different locations, but that's how long I've been in Costa Mesa. Last 25 years, I've been Lower Bird Street and we took on, the city council took on a project called Fairview Park. And we had this wonderful development and they sold us this whole bag of worms and it was going to be this graduating ponds and these pumps and a year into the project, the developer went bankrupt. Okay, that has been over 10 years ago. We now have ponds that have reeds going in them, mosquitoes that we've never had before. The pumps never got finished. The developer filed bankruptcy and the city never completed it. And it has been a nightmare. I'll just put it that way. I can't see this city taking on this kind of project when it can't even manage a park, a Fairview Park, I just think the whole thing is outrageous and it really should be just completely looked at again and reevaluated because just look and see what Fairview Park and it's up. It has been a nightmare. Thank you.

Thank you. Hi, my name is Michael Jacobs, and I'm an assistant coach at Newport Harbor High School for the girls and boys golf team. You heard from our head coach just a little while ago, and I'll try to keep my comments brief because he covered some important things. So I'm here in favor of keeping the Mesa Linda golf course a full 18 holes, which would mean finding an alternative for the proposed secondary access road. I think I heard earlier from the vice chair that he would like to hear some candor And if I looked at any place where you could put an access road, the one that's been chosen right now is the most destructive place you could put one for hurting the Mesa Linda golf course. The Mesa Linda course is really a gem. It's short but challenging and critical to a number of high school golf teams, including Estancia, Costa Mesa, Newport Harbor, Toronto Mar, Marina, Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley, plus OCC and Vanguard, their men's and women's teams utilize Costa Mesa. So it's a fabulous facility for the city. And having a full 36 holes at Costa Mesa is important as the facilities serve so many in the community. In addition to the high school and college golf teams, the place is always packed with players practicing and playing. It is a fabulous facility for within the city. So golf is really a challenging and great game and in many ways it mirrors life. At Newport Harbor, our head coach, Scott Tarnow, plus his assistants, which there are three of us, are most interested in character development for our players. So we're interested in the children that are in our programs that they learn important lessons such as being good citizens on the golf course, being respectful, fixing pitch marks and divots out on the course, learning to handle adversity. In life, you're going to get a lot of adversity out on the golf course. You get it every single round for those of you that play. working hard if you want to get better taking responsibility uh... and most importantly not complaining when you have to walk all the way back from mesa linda number nine because that's where we end up our matches so we're as far away from the from the clubhouse as you could possibly be and have to walk all the way back and so we have a couple of our players here today so they know that you walk back without complaining uh... i grew up in costa mesa and my dad taught me to play golf And I think Commissioner Andre was talking about her child and what would happen in 18 years. And so I rode my bike to Costa Mesa. And back in the day, you actually had to pedal your bike. It wasn't an e-bike. And that was in the late 1960s. So the course had been only open for one or two years. And both courses were really bad back then. There was little grass on the fairway. There were no trees. The greens were terrible. And today, the place is amazing. amazing the staff are just fantastic and they're incredibly supportive all right thank you

Hi, my name is Tom Reitz. I live in Costa Mesa. Hold on, just give me one second.

We're just going to be here longer if you keep clapping. I thought that was for me. No, not yet, sir.

All right, go ahead. My name is Tom Reitz. I live in Mesa Verde. I've lived there for 26 years. I can echo that the neighborhood has no idea that this project is being planned. Despite all the mailings and everything that have gone out, they've been in the form of the kind of mailings that you get that also say that Stater Brothers has beef for 89 cents and all the other assorted, you know, not first class mail. Mesa Verde is about the same size as the planned community for the Fairview Developmental Center in terms of acreage. We have about 350 houses and a church. This plan is putting in 4,000 units. I don't understand how that comports with the community. I understand that there needs to be more housing, but 4,000 units... It's just completely, I mean, unfathomable. I also would like to echo the previous comments that I remember hearing all the time about how there aren't enough soccer fields. that people are coming from Santa Ana and they're coming from Fullerton and they're using our soccer fields and our kids don't have the ability to use soccer fields. And it seems like an answer can be come up with. The staff, who I'm sure have done a great job, were saying that whether or not the project is profitable is going to depend on the mix of how much is going to be condo and private sale and how much is going to be low-income housing. So you just have to play with that mix and get to where people are happy. But 40% low-income housing, most of these projects are going to be 10%. I don't know where the 40% came from. And the other thing to consider is public housing projects generally don't have a good history for the communities in which they've been placed. And how does that end up working? Because the people who live there don't have a lot of money. That means they can't pay the rent every month. So then when these very large buildings require very expensive maintenance, who ends up having to foot the bill? The city has to end up footing the bill. That's how these projects end up failing. And that's what I'm not hearing is I'm hearing a whole bunch of stuff about where we're going to be in 18 years, but where are we going to be in year 19? and 20 and 25 and 30 when we have this low-income housing area that ends up not being maintained and has a much higher density. It's not going to be 2.3 people per unit. That's not... I was in law enforcement for 25 years. I never have been to a low-income area and found 2.3 people living in a house. That just doesn't happen. So again, I'm against the plan as proposed, but I believe that there is a way to make a compromise where we can get some more soccer fields and we can get some housing for people who need it in our community. Thanks.

All right. Thank you.

Good evening, commissioners and Costa Mesa residents. My name is Marilyn Packer. I'm a College Park resident. And from listening to how long this project will take from 12 to 20 years, to me that sounds like a lot of dirt kicked up into the air, which will mean a lot of pollution and a lot of noise pollution. So I have concerns about that because I'm not that far from that project and the traffic is going to be horrendous. The traffic already is not very good. My question is how many of you live near where this project is going to be developed? Okay, so I'm sure you feel the same, have those concerns too. Another thing is we're going to need more law enforcement. We're going to need more firefighters. We need more exits. We need to reduce the number of people living in this development that's being planned because we are going to all suffer from overdevelopment. Now, from what I understand, and I don't know if this is still the case, City of Costa Mesa is looking at developing or redeveloping parts of Harbor Boulevard and Newport Boulevard. Am I wrong? I don't, okay. So there also will be a lot more development, construction, traffic. I don't know if all these plans are going to happen at the same time, but I am definitely against what's going on currently for these project developments. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Kathy Esfahani. lifelong resident of Costa Mesa, and I live in Mesa Verde, and I know this project very well, and I'm strongly in support of it. You know, lack of affordable housing is a crisis in Costa Mesa. Many thousands of Costa Mesa residents pay way too much for rent. Families live on the edge of homelessness because rent is so high. Seniors have to decide whether to pay their rent or buy food and medicine. So affordable housing is a pressing human need. And Fairview Developmental Center, this 100 acres, which I know is whittled down to about 80 acres because of state mandates for certain parts of it, is a wonderful solution for our city. There is just a tremendous opportunity to build the kind of housing we need. I'm not sure if you're aware that a really ugly flyer was distributed in, I think it was the Lower Birds, It made a total a number of falsehoods and made a number of really Horrible statements about the sort of people who will live in the affordable housing at this site and And you've heard a little bit of the language tonight you've heard someone talk about ultra-low housing as if the low and very low housing is for homeless people. Of course it's not. As someone else already pointed out, it's for nurses and teachers and preschool teachers and your favorite chef and your barber. These are people who are part of our community and need this housing, and I would welcome them as neighbors. They are not lower people. They are not a criminal element. They will not bring down the property values of Mesa Verde or College Park or You know, these are people who are already part of our community. So I think that there are some issues that do need to be addressed, like lack of park space. And someone just made a terrific suggestion here. I hope you heard it. Unlock the school yards after school. Let kids play in the neighborhood parks that are, you know, that's part of the school. That would increase the play area very strongly. So anyway, I urge you to approve the project. Approve 4,000 units because that's what Costa Mesa needs. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, settle down. Go ahead, Ms. Russell.

Good evening. I'm Diane Russell, and I want to speak in favor of moving these items forward, the EIR, the master plan, the specific plan. And I do so for a number of reasons. One, this simply gives the master developer a framework to put the development together that will create a new neighborhood in our city. Their initial design will not be the final one. There will be changes and input from the staff, electeds, and residents. As we know, it's going to take 15, 18 years for this to be developed. There are, however, some things that will not change. One is the need for housing. People who work here have to move to Corona and then drive back into the city. That doesn't cut down on traffic. As long as we have a vibrant jobs market, people are going to want to work here and they want to live here. Two, the need for housing for low and very low income people. Many of the jobs in the city are service related and these jobs are important and create a diverse and healthy economy. Those families belong here too. As Kathy related, there's been some fear mongering being created in the community. very flyers and whispers, that things will change in the community. Low income people will bring crime. Low income for one person is $60,000. I'm one of those people, and I just want to let you know, I do not want to steal your stuff. Neither do the people, the families that live, a family of four that earns 81 to $90,000 a year. They are busy working at South Coast Plaza, they're taking care of your kids as aides in the schools, and they're working at the market. More reality, this development will unfold over the next 15 to 20 years and things will change. I hope that OCTA designs a better transportation system that includes trolleys for our city. Small businesses that are located in the center will probably come and go before it's complete. Housing types will probably change. The one thing we must ensure is that the affordable component of 40% is memorialized in the development agreement and that the developer complies with it in a timely fashion. The need for that housing will not change. There will always be artists, young families living here, clerks, security guards, teacher's aides, and apprentices that need a foothold in the city. Move forward with this plan tonight. Thank you.

Thank you. Go ahead.

Hello. My name is Betsy Densmore, and I am a recently retired business owner and resident of Costa Mesa. And I am here also to advocate for this project because I think it is so crucial that we provide more housing for our middle and lower income workers. Housing is where jobs go to sleep at night. When workers can't find stable housing, they don't come or they leave. Costa Mesa needs more workforce of affordable housing, which is the main focus of this project. We are a city with many businesses in need of employees, and most can't afford the single family homes that consume two-thirds of the city's land already. We also have seniors becoming unhoused because their retirement doesn't cover the cost of a small apartment, and other seniors who can't afford to keep up their homes because they have nowhere to go if they downsize. I'm working with some of those people with a home share program, which takes care of one, two, and three, but it is a very small bite of a very big problem. I want to remind everyone, as a couple of my colleagues already have, that affordable housing does not mean poor people housing. But given the cost of living here, a single person making less than $100,000 is considered low income. A two-person household making $74,000 is considered very low income. These are our sons, our daughters, our teachers, our health and social service workers, our entry-level professionals. There seems to be a lot of misinformation about who wants to live here or who should be living here. 40% of 3450 units, which probably is the minimum we need to build, would be a significant help in addressing this shortage of folks who fall below our median income, which again, take this in everybody, Costa Mesa's median income is $111,500. I don't make that. Please be wary also of the fact that the state DDS demands will dictate over 200 units of the very low income housing for which we are probably going to be required to build. So the poorest are probably going to be people with developmental disabilities. I guess the last thing is that I just, I feel like there's a lot of people here tonight who were Johnny come lately. The idea that this was a surprise when there have been two years of meetings and social media posts and newspaper articles and postcards and publications and city newsletters and that this program and that a lot of the issues you've raised haven't been thought about and addressed by the consultants and by city workers is laughable to me. Moreover, some of what you've addressed is not going to get worked out now. It's going to get worked out after we approve the concept and get going on figuring out how.

Thank you. Go ahead.

Hi, I'm the Reverend Dr. Monica Corsaro. All my degrees make me very elite in this room, but I would qualify for this new development. So don't forget it's your clergy too besides your teachers and your coaches and your favorite chef. I want to say let's go forward with this and let's invite the golfers. I love this golfing lobby that's here today. You are coming out for something you are passionate about. I love that you're doing that and I love that we have a city golf course. But I think we're a city that can have both. We can have affordable housing and we can have beautiful parks to play in and we can have a golf course. I come from Seattle where Seattle is a disaster. I came here because I worked on affordable housing and properties there and so I could work on it here and find a new way to solve this problem. The plan will pass, hopefully, but what I've learned in my dabbling with affordable housing and building properties is nothing is sacred until it's sacred. I think we have an opportunity in the next 18 years to work out the traffic. We're gonna have to. We're just gonna have to. There's another caveat and another rule that I live by in my faith. Housing is a right, not a privilege. Let's house our neighbors. Let's house our children. Let's have an opportunity for your 28-year-old to stay in town. Because by then, rents are going to be $10,000 for a two-bedroom house. Because right now, they're averaging between $4,000 and $5,000. So let's work on this, and let's do it creatively. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, go ahead.

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. My name is Crystal Lynn, and my daughter is a third generation College Park Cougar. So I also won most spirited all four years at Costa Mesa High School. So to say I love Costa Mesa would be an understatement. I'm kind of obsessed with it here. I love the opportunity for new families to live here, but I do think we should be concerned with the lack of green space and open space that's been proposed. The staff has already stated that there's alternative ways that we can get credit for green space instead of actually giving the public the green space. The development takes away from multiple holes in the golf course and it takes current green space that we already have in this city. I wish I had the talent of these golfers, but unfortunately, I just share the passion for opportunities for children to be outside and doing sports. We're also assuming that all of the elementary school students are going to be zoned to Wilson where green space is already limited. I'd say, not to mention the straight on the bus system since that school is significantly farther than College Park is, but they don't have to cross a major street. I think it's safe to assume that in order to accommodate these students at Wilson, they'd be adding portables to their already limited green space, which I'm also concerned about. Moving on from the green space, everyone's concerned about the traffic. I don't need to bore you again with that, but I will say that being at a bare minimum and it doesn't include fair traffic is something that should be concerning. All of us are used to it now, but we haven't added that into the traffic study. That was not taken into consideration at all. So I think that is something we should think about and I agree that having low-income neighbors won't lower our value of our homes I'm not afraid. I think there's people that are fear-mongering against fear-mongering. I'm not afraid of anyone moving into this city I do think the traffic will lower our home values and the value of our city So I think our allegiance to the development and the developmental or the developers outweighs The importance that we have to our children, so I just think that should be considered. Thank you for your time.

Thank you

Hi, Forest Flaherty. I am a Cornerstone resident. I appreciate the people who spoke up on our behalf and concerned about our safety making that left turn out of our residence. Currently, right now, with just construction, we're already getting backed up in our neighborhood. I can't imagine hundreds of cars coming and going. Fair drive entering and exiting our facility here our community That is one of our biggest concerns is the safety issue We're already getting landlocked right now in our community with just construction vehicles. You know backing up right now on Harper Boulevard and fair And the other issue I have is kind of beating a dead horse, but, you know, Costa Mesa spent all this money with all these renderings and everything else of, you know, of all this green space and everything for these meetings. And it seemed like the community wanted much more green space, less housing, everything. And they don't even take that consideration anymore. that they just want to cram all these houses in this development and not even listen to what Costa Mesa really wants. Thank you.

Thank you. Bob Abbott, Mason Verde. It feels like our focus is a little off in this whole discussion. It feels like we're worshipping at the altar of feasibility. And whether that feasibility has been mandated by the state by a minimum price that they need to get for this piece of land or some return on investment, I don't know what it is. Feels like we're so focused on feasible. I don't know what the right number is. I don't know what the right number of housing is but it feels like the focus should be what's good for the city of Costa Mesa and There's going to be some affordable housing in that I think and I don't know what number it is 34 35 I don't know but it feels like we're doing these measures these financial measures and that a developer would do if they had, you know, a right to develop, say, 4,000. Sure, they'd develop 4,000. But the city is going to offset that with some sort of adverse, healthy adverse relationship. Somebody talked about earlier, what would happen if we don't approve the 4,000? If we only approve 34, well, the state might take it over and they might develop it. Well, they would develop it under city of Costa Mesa guidelines, I would assume. And if that happened, there would be a healthy adverse relationship. I think. Maybe not. Maybe I'm wrong. But it just feels like we're focusing on financial metrics a little too much. Should be focusing a little bit more on what I'm hearing over here. What's good for the city? What's good for the neighborhoods? What's good for all of us? I think that's it. Thanks. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Steve McNally. I'm also a resident of Costa Mesa. And I'm also on Orange County BE for Health Advisory Board. My comments are my own. I think my concern has been that I haven't been to every meeting But the first meeting I was at was when Susan Price explained how we were going to model villages at Cabrillo, which is 1,500 units on 25 acres in Long Beach. But we were going to do 300 units, and then the details sort of got fuzzy. And I would just ask that you communicate this a lot better. either take your documents and put in AI. The fact that I cannot identify easily market rate versus non-market rate, the income profile, the actual person that's gonna be in there. I don't think most people can identify affordable housing from market rate housing when it's built by an affordable housing developer. It doesn't look much different. As long as they're both not single family. And my concern, too, is this seems to be trying to pencil out something. The county only has so many big pieces of property. It's got 80 acres next to Irvine that's hung up. And next to the 22 acres, they gave to Mind OC for Be Well. They've got the golf course that Irvine Company is going to take over there in Irvine. They have Fairview. You know, when I lived in New York City, Stuyvesant Park was a big development of high-rise buildings for up-and-coming professionals who couldn't afford to live in that city. large numbers were taken care of. This isn't what we're looking at. We're looking at a typical California, spend $20 billion, build a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and it's not going to solve a lot of the initial problems. It's on the backs of the people that need subsidized housing. I mean, I think Shannon's Mountain is still in there, but Given what that piece of property could have been, if it was focused on community needs. And when I went to that last meeting, it wasn't really clear. So I just looked it up. So there's no public list of how many people have even applied. and shown interest in this project. I don't know when that'll be public, but maybe you all can share that later in your comments. But I don't see a lot of developers in this room, and this, once again, seems to me to be California's backroom dealing.

All right, thank you.

Hi, I'm Steve DeZita. Lived in Mesa Verde for 47 years. I apologize for my attire here. I spent the afternoon masquerading as a golfer. And I really love our golf courses. And it's unfortunate if a project like this is going to have to make changes in our golf course, but I have no problem in setting as a priority, avoiding that kind of a change to our golf courses in exchange for making it possible for our grandchildren and our children and our grandchildren, our teachers, our teachers' aides, our rookie first responders, our other service providers, being able to live here in Costa Mesa as opposed to having to go to Riverside or Corona or someplace. If your daughter's and your granddaughter's teacher shows up after having driven an hour and a half and faces another hour and a half on the way home, are we getting the best we can from our teachers? That's a much greater priority in my mind than that. And I really think that here in Costa Mesa, we're better than what we got ours and we don't care about everybody else we got to care about our kids our grandkids our neighbors And this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you people to represent us well and approve a project like this with the most units we can get, the most affordable units we can get, because if we want to do what's best for our city, that's what's really best for our city. If the golf course gets changed, I would be sorry about that, but I would not be sorry about it if we had more police and firefighters getting their start in Costa Mesa than having to drive from San Bernardino. What's really best for us is to maximize the amount of affordable housing we can offer in our city. Our state needs 2 million units. This isn't going to solve that problem, but this is a big step forward in the right direction, and I really encourage you to think about it from that standpoint because this is not going to be an opportunity for you again like this in your lifetime to make a big step forward in affordability here in our city. Thanks.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Erica DiToccio, 14-year Costa Mesa resident. I'm also a facility planning coordinator for the Newport Mesa School District. My comments are my own, but I'd just like to add some context about the use of the current Newport Mesa fields and school facilities. They're already an incredible asset to our community. The fields extend beyond the regular day with recess PE athletic student programs on school aftercare, which is so needed in our community for parents that work, while also balancing reservations for Athletics clubs games as you all probably know Through the incredibly hard-working Newport Mesa staff tax dollar support our utilities our grounds crew fees So just want to take a moment to appreciate what we have But also that they are heavily utilized most of them in title one schools are open after school hours on the weekends already our existing 1950 average school facilities do need the love as well and just wanted to Distinguished between what could be a utilized asset and what already is for our growing community? Thank you.

Thank you Hello, my name is Maria Desita and our my husband and I bought our home not 47 years ago But 40 years ago in Mesa Verde in the Upper Bird District our house literally backs up to the golf course and We raised our four children there. Our eight grandchildren now play there. We spent $300,000 in 1986 for our home that's now worth over $3 million. We couldn't afford to buy that house today, and our children certainly couldn't afford it, or our grandchildren. I don't think I need to remind anybody in this room how housing has skyrocketed. But this is an incredible opportunity for us to truly tackle the affordable housing crisis in this city. I recognize that there are a variety of interests, the golf enthusiasts, the sports field enthusiasts, the park enthusiasts, those are concerned about additional traffic. But housing is such a fundamental human right that should supersede all of those other issues and the provision of housing or the lack of housing can change the trajectory of an entire family for years to come. Mayor Stephens has referred to our beloved city as a city of compassion. This is an opportunity for us to truly show that we are compassionate people by taking this huge piece of infill and doing the right thing. It's been said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. This is our opportunity to not only do the compassionate thing, the just thing, and the right thing. It's an opportunity to help our neighbors who work here and who need to live here. So let's take advantage of this rare opportunity and do what we need to do. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Jack Forte. I'm a 25-year-old aircraft mechanic over at John Wayne. I've lived here my entire life, and my family's been here since 1957. Our world is changing, and our city needs to as well. As a young person facing the housing crisis, costs have never been higher, and I'd love to live here. I'd love to stay with all these people, but that may not be in the cards for me or my generation. All that being said, I think we can do better than the current plan. Better planning would mean a better future. What I have to say is the flow of traffic alone that's been touched on by everyone would ruin this city. Why not distribute it across several zones? Why concentrate all these people into one area? We do need this, but let's do it right. Let's build a better community for the people that'll be here tomorrow. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Cynthia McDonald, Costa Mesa resident. I recognize the need for housing, especially affordable housing, but the real question here is whether this plan creates a balanced community or maximizes housing at the expense of everything else the residents want and need. First, the amount of land just steadily shrunk while the housing expectations grew. The city originally had 115 acres. The state removed 15 acres for the EOC, then another 20 acres for its project. Now we're left with 80 acres, and yet the housing element obligation stayed at 2,300 units. But here we are with a plan that contemplates up to 4,000 units on even less land. with no increase in affordable units. Why are we increasing the number of units when we don't even know what the master developer will propose? Why negotiate against ourselves before that conversation has even begun? The master developer will improve the site and then sell it off to a site developer, and no site developer is going to carry that loan for 12 years and not build on it. They don't do that. I worked for developers. They're gonna sell that land as quick as they can. Residents were told their input would shape this plan, so through the outreach process, we consistently asked for affordable housing, parks, sports fields, community centers, childcare, senior centers, Walkable neighborhoods, safe bike and transit connections, neighborhood serving retail, preservation of trees and green space. The message is clear. The residents want a complete community, not just a housing project. What is the financial impact on the city? I saw a letter saying that the libraries aren't going to be able to handle the extra folks. The draft EIR identifies significant and unavoidable impacts, including air quality, greenhouse gases. Those findings warrant consideration, as well as the projected LOSE on Victoria and Placentia, E as in excessive EIR. This is a once a generation opportunity. The community was told its input mattered. Please ensure the final plan reflects the vision the residents expressed, a balanced, livable, complete neighborhood, and not simply the maximum number of housing units that can fit on the site. There are other alternatives, and those need to be explored. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Anybody else in chambers wish to speak? Okay, yep. Sorry, we don't do questions and answers, so you're more than welcome to speak.

I'm sorry, Jim Bollinger, College Park homeowner. How many parking spots are gonna be designated for the 4,000 homes?

Like I said, we don't respond to questions. This is just your opportunity to speak your... All right, well, let's say 4,000.

If you take your homes or your cars, there's going to be 4,000 to 8,000 cars. They're going to be sitting in a landlocked area. Two ways in, two ways out. The fairgrounds, there's got to be 8,000 to 10,000 parking spots out here. Well, that's going to be 365 days a year of those cars coming out of the fair every day on Harbor Boulevard and fair. So, in my opinion, low-cost homes are nothing more but a ghetto happening in the future, and the... Lost my train of thought, but thank you. All right. Thank you. And too many cars are not going to be good for California or Costa Mesa.

All right. Ms. Green, do we have anybody on Zoom and by phone?

Yes, phone number ending in 714, please.

Thank you. I HEARD ONE OF THE SPEAKERS SAY ABOUT A COMMUNITY BEING MORE THAN JUST HOUSING. AND THIS IS TRUE. WE ALL WANT SOME LOW INCOME HOUSING. BUT THIS PROJECT, YOU KNOW THE DEVELOPERS THAT ARE GOING IN WITH 60% OF MARKET PRICE. THEY'LL WHITTLE AWAY THAT 40% SO THAT THEY CAN HAVE A LARGER PROFIT. YOU HAVE A PLAN, BUT THE PLAN YOU HAVE ISN'T THE PLAN that the residents want so that they can maintain their city. We want low-income housing. There's no question about that. But when you cite LOSD as on Giesler, if anybody has been on that site at 5 o'clock, you know you can sit through three signals. So imagine what an LOSD would be if that intersection had all the extra traffic. The answer... isn't clear because your plan isn't clear. And I think what everybody forgets is that these developers are like a bunch of hungry sharks. They are going to have market price homes. This is not going to lower the value of homes. It's not going to lower the rent because they're not going to lower the prices of 60% of these homes. So you need a comprehensive plan, not a maybe, not a conceptual plan, but something that residents can see and have actual facts on, just not something you hope will happen. Thank you.

Thank you.

Wendy, please.

Yes, good evening. I listened to the comments and the staff and the presentation. Excuse me. I've been going to the meetings with Cynthia and others for like the last 3 years. It seems like for the very beginning, when they were talking about the, and we, there are probably 100 people there in the old auditorium that the state had a gun to the heads of Costa Mesa. And that they're in position of what their will is with their land was the priority and that Costa Masons, they could really care less that were already built out and they were going to put as many units on this property as they could. My concern is, and several people have addressed this, is the statement of the significant and unavoidable impacts. I'm not really an environmentalist, but I am concerned about air quality. I'm concerned about the GH gases. And to say that something is significant and unavoidable is... really not fair to the current residents and the future residents of Costa Mesa. I hope there is some legal means to really drill down and figure out a way to mitigate the environmental impacts, the biological ones at the pond and the historical ones too. And also I want to talk about the traffic that's going to be generated at these intersections. I think there's more work to be done. I don't think. that even though they tried hard, that the last town hall was the best input from the residents. But before that, it was more of a dog and pony show and little stickers. We really didn't get to put in our two cents. And I hope you can come up with a good solution to this bigger problem. I do agree we need affordable housing though, but more work needs to be done. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Jen, please. Hi, commission. My name is Jen Tanaka and I'm a Costa Mesa resident. I 1st, I want to say how incredible the heart of this city is. So many people have shown up tonight to plead for mercy for others. They do not know. And maybe we'll never know who are being crushed by housing prices. And that's so incredible. I just, I love the city. That said, I think we need to be clear-eyed about what is being recommended. At any unit count that pencils out financially, by the city's own feasibility analysis, it's going to be north of 3,500 units. This plan requires the access road across the golf course. Even a development of the lower initial unit count will need that road in the future if any growth occurs. So any unit count at or above 2,300, 2,500 units is the functional end of the golf course as it exists today, either sooner or later. And if that's the direction, the commission is going to go, then don't let the course get chipped away at piecemeal over the next 15 years. The time to deliberately reimagine the golf course unfortunately would be now. No, 1 wants to consider something in the neighborhood of 27 holes rather than what it exists today, but it might be the only way to deliver this amount of housing. while giving the community something is asked for at every workshop, every meeting on this project. Sports fields, meaningful open space, real progress on park access, and not just the leftover corners and firms this plan currently treats as, quote, open space. So if you move this plan forward, I just hope we all understand that we've probably sealed the face of the course as it is today, and that's just reality, and we should own up to it and make the best of it. But if the commission doesn't want to move it forward, I wonder if you have more room than maybe it feels like you do. First, I think you can just simply decline to recommend this plan. I think staff will proceed regardless. But your recommendation is advisory. And I think that's the best permission anyone can give you not to wave this through. Maybe give your honest recommendation. or maybe this might be controversial, you could recommend the city go back to the table with HCD on the affordability requirement itself. We're already badly out of compliance with our housing element obligations. Maybe in this case, it's a blessing in disguise. Ironically, we have no compliance status to defend, so that might free our hand to be frank with HCD. Every analysis is telling you that we cannot serve 4,000 units in this location without significantly reconfiguring our roads and or upending one of our central community assets. And those same analyses are telling you that this big number is being driven by the depth of the affordability requirement. The financial feasibility analysis confirms this, and so does DGS's analysis sent earlier this July. So maybe we need to reconsider what the capacity of the site really is, especially in light of it being substantially cut down size, thanks to the state coming in with its many needs. Maybe it simply can't live up to what we wanted at a price we can pay. And if that's the case, it would be much better to come to terms with that now rather than later. Thank you.

Thank you.

No further speakers, Mr. Chair.

Okay, I'm gonna close public comment. Commissioners, any final questions of staff? Commissioner Dixon.

So I heard some interesting conversations at the town hall or the last thing about the interrelationship between the density bonus laws and the total number of units that we put in our specific plan. So if we were to say 2300 is the absolute cap, where would that put us from a density bonus perspective in the potential number of units that could be built there? Because we keep hearing about this sort of Damocles of the density cap and how we can't really predict anything and we just have to throw darts at the wall and see what sticks. But if we set a unit count number limit, THAT DETERMINES AND DRIVES THE POTENTIAL DENSITY BONUS NUMBERS, CORRECT?

YEAH, THAT'S CORRECT. IT WAS SET THE BASE DENSITY FOR APPLICABLE DENSITY BONUS, CONCESSIONS AND WAIVERS WHICH GIVEN THE AMOUNT OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN THIS PLAN THAT'S REQUIRED IS SIGNIFICANT. IT COULD BE 40 TO 50% IF NOT MORE THAN 2300 UNITS. STANDPOINT, A CONSTRAINT STANDPOINT OF HOW MANY UNITS COULD REASONABLY FIT ON THE SITE, THERE'S PROBABLY A NATURAL CAP THERE. WE THINK IT'S AROUND 4,000. SO THEY MIGHT NOT, YOU KNOW, USE THE ENTIRE STATE DENSITY BONUS, BUT I HAVE SAID THIS IN MEETINGS BEFORE, I WILL SAY IT AGAIN, IF THE PLAN DOES NOT REPRESENT A FINANCIALLY FEASIBLE OPTION, I THINK THERE IS A VERY HIGH LIKELIHOOD THAT THE DEVELOPER WILL UTILIZE STATE DENSITY BONUS LAW. TO GET TO A FINANCIALLY FEASIBLE UNIT COUNT.

CAN I JUMP IN? THANK YOU FOR EXPLAINING THAT. I THINK ALSO FOR GENERAL EXPLANATION OF THE PUBLIC, UNDER DENSITY BONUS WE ESSENTIALLY LOSE A LOT OF CONTROL. THESE ARE BY RATE APPROVALS. WE HAVE TO GRANT CONCESSIONS AND WAIVERS. CAN YOU JUST EXPLAIN FOR THE PUBLIC WHAT THAT TRADE-OFF ESSENTIALLY MEANS? AND I FORGIVE ME THIS IS LIKE GETTING INTO THE WEEDS ON LAND USE ENTITLEMENT. I KNOW YOU DIDN'T DECIDE TO SPEND YOUR EVENING LISTENING TO THIS BUT THIS IS I THINK AN IMPORTANT DISCUSSION POINT ABOUT WHAT THE MAXIMUM CAPACITY COULD BE FOR THIS SITE.

YEAH. THANK YOU CHAIR HARLIN. YOU BRING UP AN EXCELLENT POINT THAT STATE DENSITY BONUS LAW WOULD THEN LIMIT THE THE CITY'S CONTROL ABILITY TO USE DISCRETION. A DENSITY BONUS CAN ONLY BE DENIED AND OR A CONCESSION OR WAIVER IF THE CITY CAN PROVE THAT THERE'S AN ADVERSE IMPACT ON HEALTH, SAFETY. I'LL LET THE ASSISTANT'S ATTORNEY SPEAK MORE TO THAT IF HE WISHES. BUT THE LITMUS TEST IS VERY HIGH FOR DENIAL IF THE PROJECT MEETS ALL OF THE CITY'S CODE AND OBJECTIVE STANDARDS AND THEIR ABILITY TO USE WAIVERS AND CONCESSIONS. SO TO NOT MEET ANY OF THE STANDARDS, THERE'S A LARGER ABILITY TO DO THAT. SO JUST FOR THE PUBLIC'S BENEFIT, A CONCESSION IS SOMETHING THAT YOU GET BECAUSE YOU'RE PROVIDING AFFORDABLE HOUSING. SO A CONCESSION MIGHT BE HEIGHT, an additional sort of development standard but a waiver is something that a Developer can show that they cannot provide affordable housing unless they waive that requirement So there's a little bit different litmus test for doing that and state law has been updated in recent years To show that the burden of proof is on the city So that means that the city would have to prove that there is some sort of adverse health or safety impact in order to deny that And then I will look to the Assistant City Attorney if he wants to correct anything I said.

I have no corrections. Ms. McGill is absolutely correct. The state has set a very, very high bar for denying a waiver of concession on a density bonus project as to the city has to show city health and safety impacts and be able to support those impacts by facts. And that's a very high bar to meet. And I'm available for questions if you have any, Chair.

So conceivably, sorry.

No, no. I want to get to the bottom of this question.

So conceivably, a developer comes in with density bonus application. We have to approve by rights. We lose our flexibility. We basically lose our negotiating ability. So the idea of a development agreement, which provides opportunity for us to negotiate community benefits, disappears. Is that right?

TO SOME DEGREE IT'S TRUE. A DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT IS VOLUNTARILY ENTERED INTO. IT'S VERY LIKELY THAT A DEVELOPER WOULD STILL ASK FOR ONE FOR THE TERMS OF PHASING BECAUSE EMPITOMENTS ONLY LAST SO LONG. BUT, YES, YOU ARE CORRECT THAT THEY WOULD NOT NEED TO NEGOTIATE A LOT OF FACTORS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT IN THE D.A. IF THEY CAN USE CONCESSIONS AND WAIVERS.

OKAY. THANK YOU. SORRY. GO AHEAD.

I APPRECIATE THAT. And understanding the city council said we don't want to have a parking minimum for residential. So I understand some of the folks have argued, and I know that this is true because we've seen it in front of our own commission, that it's true in some cases that a developer will put in the number of parking spaces they think will make their project viable. However, we're talking about a 40% affordable housing or 900 and whatever units. No parking is required. So if we need to make to balance out, we're just not going to provide any parking for the affordable units. That's a possibility. OK. I just wanted to make that. I wanted to understand that. And then I think those are my actual questions right now. I think a great presentation. I really sincerely appreciate it. A lot of detail was provided, and I have a lot of comments, but not questions right now. So thank you.

OK. Anybody else on the dais have questions of staff? Commissioner, go ahead, Commissioner Andrade.

Quick question. Could we, or is it already incorporated in the proposal to include Mary Mack Way once the lease is up? Right, because it's coming up by the end of the year. So is that already included, that we will?

Yeah, we did add some text into the specific plan that if Merrimack Way lease comes up for agreement or negotiation with the state, that that could potentially be an alternative access if that lease agreement and negotiation had taken place.

Okay. And so we talked about the second access road. If you could just clarify the second access road and we talked I know that in the report I read that we engaged with a golf design expert that Demonstrated that we're not we're reconfiguring Holes, so we're not losing holes. We're like shifting it around Remodeling it moving them around so we were not losing any number of holes. So Is that correct

Yes, that's correct.

Thank you so much.

All right, hold on. Go ahead, Commissioner Dixon.

One more question about, I forgot to ask this, and I apologize. Did we ever figure out whether or not there is a public access or an easement on Merrimack? I mean, Mr. Grady did a CPRA request and got a bunch of documents, and I don't know if there's an actual easement there.

To our knowledge there is not a public access easement that you know usually through the map action would have been dedicated and Subway recorded. It's currently private Okay, all right.

I appreciate. I just wanted to get that question answered if you did Stephanie.

Thanks Okay Commissioner Martinez you still with us

Yes, sir. No questions.

No questions. Okay. I'm going to close the item then. And who wants to be the lucky one to make a motion? Commissioner Andrade.

I move to receive and file.

Well, our.

Well, the lung.

What? I'm sorry, what do you mean by receive and file?

That we adopt the resolution recommended.

Okay, that's not receiving and filing.

Yes, thank you.

Okay, so we have a motion by Commissioner Andrade to move staff's recommendation. Do we have a second? Okay.

I can second that.

All right, Commissioner Martinez, seconds. Okay, Commissioner Andrade, would you like to speak to your motion?

Yes. Well, first off, I think this is, as we've heard, of critical importance for the development of our city and our growth. I appreciate many of the residents that have come out. My daughter goes to College Park, so I'm very familiar with that neighborhood as well. And many of the parents in our PTA live in that area, Mesa Verde, Mesa del Mar as well. But I also live adjacent to this project along Joanne Street. And I can share with you that on this side of the road, District 4, District 5, residents on Joanne Street along Placentia down Wilson are welcoming this opportunity to have renewed housing in our home. in our district. Um, a lot of the, this project, as we saw in the previous planning commission is going to have rental units, first time home buyer opportunities at the low income level. And again, I really appreciate, um, some of the pastors and residents that, uh, reminded us what this wonderful banner in the back and God, we trust on what the, um, church values are right of taking care of our neighbors and also highlighting the opportunity that affordable housing, low-income housing is for many of our teachers, police force, fire. I mean, I know here in Planning Commission, we lost a commissioner to the city of Anaheim because it was more affordable. Many of our city staff can afford to live here themselves. So providing this affordable housing unit opportunities is huge. And again, I won't go into the details about comments of low-income housing bringing any amount of crime, because as we saw, even a pastor with multiple degrees would qualify for this housing opportunity. There is a great deal of oversight and insight. We've been reviewing this since 2023. It's right here in the material. I think that the city has taken meaningful fiscal responsibility. We received a grant, so it didn't even come out of We receive a grant in order to do the study that we have seen in detail. As we talked about, yes, this is going to be low-income renter, but there's also going to be plenty of market value units, which I think will help and accommodate the developer to be able to make up the difference. Um, again, with the improvements on page 15 of our report with the improvements, this project would not have a significant would have a would have a change in Harbor Boulevard, but wouldn't be no different as we heard from city stuff from 26 intersections that already exist. And if anything, more and more I hear from our residents, please slow down the roads. So if anything is going to reduce the speed so our streets are safer. You know, and I heard, you know, it's very true. I recall someone mentioned that in College Park people make their own stop signs just so it's safer. I agree. Let's slow these streets down. Our youth deserve it. And along that, along those lines, I know that I've brought this up multiple times, but I know a third access road I think could also help address a lot of these concerns. I know that we've explored it. If there's an opportunity to give it one more round before this goes to city council so that we have exhausted all opportunities. I mean, just driving down Placentia along Fairview Park, the wall of the city yard along the golf course doesn't have that big fencing that we were concerned about. Maybe there's a way to turn around the Shelley Drive to connect to that so that it doesn't create a meaningful impact and it wouldn't require those big nets that we're concerned about because currently along the city yard, those nets aren't there. So that tells me maybe there's not, the golf bars aren't going in that direction. So that would help mitigate. In addition to that, to response to our, um, for our youth, for the families that would be moving here. Um, I know that in the previous conversations and study sessions, we have already engaged with Newport Mesa school district that have advised that we have capacity to absorb in our school district. So they will be served. Um, there are fields and open green space that are going to be accessible, not just to the community that lived there, but for district four and district five who currently are under park resource. I live in my district and I only have two parks and both of them are currently being developed. So I have no parks right now. So knowing that I can get on Joanne bike trail and hop into a playground with my daughter is wonderful. Um, to know that, NOW THE WEST SIDE OF COASA MESA IS GOING TO HAVE EQUITABLE PARK SPACE IN THIS PROJECT. I ALSO APPRECIATE ONE OF THE RESIDENTS SHARED ABOUT THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL FIELDS AND YES I KNOW A LOT OF AFTER SCHOOL PROGRAMMING HAPPENS THERE BUT I KNOW THAT THEY'RE YOU KNOW ACTUALLY THE NEXT AGENDA ITEM IF YOU STAY TUNED WE'RE ACTUALLY GOING TO TALK ABOUT THAT THAT IS ONE OF THE PROPOSALS THAT I'M GOING TO BE MAKING AND EXPANDING OUR JOINT USE AGREEMENT WITH NEWPORT MESA SCHOOL DISTRICT TO MAKE SURE THAT fields are accessible to the community year round outside of school programming or after school programming to provide that green space that's very needed. Um, yeah. Um, again, and just, uh, I think something that has come up, something that was brought up, um, I think someone mentioned, you know, studies of strong, strong cities or strong works. I forget the term, But if we had blanking rezoning, we should be able to build this affordable housing all across so it's spread out and not so concentrated, right? Strong towns. That was the one. Strong towns that provide a lot of great data and study around this issue. But the reality is that we don't have the capacity to rezone everything. The only allowed housing development that the city is able, because of Measure K a few years back, is along Newport Boulevard, along Harbor, and then Fairview Development Center. Nothing is being touched on the single-family housing that is adjacent to Newport. We're actually not allowed to build affordable housing. I mean, here, over and over, we see applications of full at-market value housing that's being developed, very little times affordable. So this is why. This is an opportunity for the city to meet this requirement and expectation to build housing for our future.

All right, thank you. Commissioner Martinez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, tonight we are considering a plan that will take two decades to implement, a plan for which those born today will not be fully implemented until their high school graduation. I grew up in this community. I made friends in this community. Unfortunately, those are now future generations will continue to leave because of housing unaffordability. He came to the circumstance because we in this city are neighboring cities and across the state did not bill Clithrow for sharing the concept of supply and demand with increased supply prices drop It's with decreased supply, prices go up. It's true if you felt it with gas prices. It's true with housing. If in previous times we increased our housing supply gently, maybe went from single family homes to duplexes or re-added in some ADUs, we might not be here. But we didn't. And now we're planning for all of this housing at once in one location. Perhaps not ideal. but it is where we are. I'd like to thank the staff and the consultants for their efforts over the last several years and for their revisions from the previous version of this very big plan. They've addressed many different things in this plan, including mobility, where hopefully several of the policies will encourage lower vehicle miles traveled than projected, including open space, where we can hopefully get some great new open spaces in this future neighborhood. Side note, my neighborhood has no open space, so I'm happy that this neighborhood will have some. including public safety, where the plan allows for police, fire, emergency medical substations to be within it. And of course, including housing. Tonight, we are considering a plan that will take two decades to implement. Two decades to further plan for those changes. Two decades to continue discussing. Two decades to realize the needed housing, including affordable housing. for my generation, for the grocery store workers, police officers, firefighters, and recent college graduates 20 years from now in favor of this plan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. MR.

Thank you. Commissioners, other comments? Commissioner Dixon.

COMMISSIONER DIXON When was it appropriate to make a substitute motion after the comments on this motion? MR. Whenever you want.

MR. Whenever you want.

I'd like to make a substitute motion, but I don't want to cut down comment on this particular motion, so I just want to make sure I do it in the right procedural manner.

Well, you can make it. People can offer their comments to your substitute motion as well.

My substitute motion is that we postpone adoption of the specific plan at this time. that we reengage with the state and the Department of General Services to determine what the best percentage of affordable housing actually is, and that we reengage in the public participation and engagement process. It's very, very clear based on the numbers and the presentation. That's a comment. So we engage in the public participation process. We reassess the applicability of 40% affordable at this site based on the inconsistency with the number of total units stretching up to not include actually 40% due to feasibility but setting that 40% number of 2300 is some sort of cap. I don't think that's realistic or appropriate for the site. That we assess the cumulative impacts of the Measure K proposal and all build out scenarios and that we address the mobility elements that leave certain intersections for instance Placentia Victoria to LOSE. I don't think that this particular, I understand the staff has done a tremendous amount of work and our consultant team has done a tremendous amount of work. I do think this process has been short circuited and I think we've seen I think it needs a little more time. I appreciate Commissioner Martinez's comments about the fact that it's going to be 18 years. That's absolutely true. I think we should do this right. I think that we're trying to cobble together a whole bunch of things. And so I would, my motion, my substitute motion is that we postpone adoption. If we need to add in those particular things about the action items, reengage the DGS and the state, reengage the public, reassess the applicability of the 40% affordable housing and how we're actually going to achieve that. BECAUSE WE DON'T WITH THE HIGHER NUMBER OF UNITS AND ASSESS THE CUMULATIVE IMPACTS OF THE POTENTIAL MEASURE K BUILDOUT WHICH I KNOW WILL BE ANALYZED WHEN THAT COMES DOWN BUT IT'S NOT REALLY DISCUSSED IN THIS AND THAT WE ASSESS THE MOBILITY ELEMENTS THAT LEAVE US WITH A LOSE. I DON'T THINK WE SHOULD GO BACKWARDS. THAT'S MY SUBSTITUTE MOTION.

I SECOND THAT.

DO YOU WANT TO SPEAK TO YOUR SECOND?

GO AHEAD.

A number of public speakers have said this is an opportunity, once in a lifetime opportunity. I agree with that. It's the kind of opportunity you don't want to screw up. Get it right, and it's right forever. Get it wrong, it's wrong forever. There were a number of comments from the public. I don't want to respond to them directly. It feel maybe a little like I was debating you, and I don't want to do that because I respect your comments and opinions. This project is not 40% affordable. The specific plan doesn't say it's 40% affordable. It might have been at one point in time. It isn't now. You might want it to be 40% affordable, but that isn't what's in front of us. There's a thought that disrupting the golf course is inevitable. I don't accept that. It feels a little bit like surrender to me. If we accept that, we're surrendering the golf course, we're surrendering parks, we're surrendering the roads and the intersections, we're surrendering environmental impacts. If we accept this plan as is, as inevitable, I think we're surrendering. There have been comments, and even in the very first community meetings, about what is a community? What is this community? What should this community have? One of the public speakers mentioned a number of things that had been discussed by members of the public in that first session. Well, this thing does not have any of those things. It doesn't resemble the kind of community that was first talked about in one of the first public workshops. What this plan looks like to me, and I gave a long speech about this last time, but the chambers were empty. You have to go back and archive it. This plan looks like it's a I want what I want. People have been concerned about density since day one. They've been concerned about the golf course since day one. They've been concerned about lack of parks since day one. They've been concerned about traffic since day one. They've also been wanting housing and affordable housing since day one. So what went wrong? This plan just didn't listen to the input from the residents. Why? Because somehow we're convinced that we have to do 4,000 units. To what? To make a developer happy. Not you, not Costa Mesa, a developer. And we hinge all that on the financial analysis that quite frankly we didn't go through in great detail. I don't think any detail. I don't know what the assumptions were in that. I don't know if it was peer reviewed. I have no idea. I don't know if economic conditions have changed since when that was done, or if economic conditions will change over the next 20 years. But we're hinging everything on that financial feasibility. And I don't accept that as a constraint. This plan clearly is not driven by the community preferences. That's what the state hired the city to do was to work with the community to come up with a plan. This isn't that plan. The original contract with the state said 1,500 units with a maximum of 2,300 or 2,500, which you could get to if you had a density bonus law applied to a 1,500 unit development. The maximum number of units for this development should be 1,500. And if a developer wants to come in with a density bonus law proposal, project, great. Then we get to a number that most of the community has said, 2,300. That's fine. It also is the threshold by which you don't need a secondary access road. 2020, the council approved a vision of 1,500 units. It wasn't that long ago. The objections for this project have been longstanding. You know, we heard tonight again that there was a golf course design expert involved. We've never seen his plans. We've never been presented with anything from this golf course expert. The fact that I play golf regularly doesn't make me an expert, but I sure would be interested to see how an expert thinks they can cut a road across six holes of Mesa Linda, probably impact Los Lagos as well, and what, it's a better golf experience? That's the claim? Wow. I don't think so. There's legal questions about Merrimack and whether that truly is a private road or whether there's a public easement. To say I'm not aware of whether there's an easement. Okay, well I'm not aware of it either. Well go look. Have a legal review. Determine if there is or there isn't. Talk to the state. Figure out if we can actually use it for ingress and egress. You can use it today. You can drive right through today. The impacts to Harbor Boulevard and the intersections, significant and unavoidable. Significant and unavoidable, why are you doing it? Greenhouse gas emissions, significant and unavoidable. So let's pack in 4,000 units and all the people and all the cars. Really? Later in our agenda, we're gonna be talking about putting in extreme measures to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions in the city. Well, I got away right now to cut down a couple thousand units worth of that stuff. When the EIR was done, 4,000 units was pitched to us as a worst case scenario. The quote unquote preferred plan, I never heard any resident actually say they preferred the plan of 3,800 units. Oh, they bumped it up to 4,000 to study the EIR for worst case. We're not committing to 4,000 units. I wonder how that number got into our specific plan then. Hmm. Yeah, I'm not an expert on the EIR. I think I understand the legal or the expert response. It says things are really bad, significant impacts, unavoidable impacts, nothing you can do about it. And then we have some other experts that have looked at that EIR and said, you know, this really wasn't done very well. There are these different problems with it. Again, I'm not an EIR expert, but I'm going to accept that when a couple of official organizations say there's problems with the EIR, there are. But our conclusion is it doesn't really matter because nothing that they've identified would actually make things worse that would cause us to go study it again. Well, that tells me all I need to know about the environmental impact. It's bad. Parks. Yeah. 4.26 acres. If you haven't been around, that's a metric that the city has long had in its general plan as a goal for parkland in the city. 4.26 acres per thousand residents. Well, we're not there. We're well below there. For years, people looked at Fairview Hospital and that site as it was closing down is what a great opportunity to finally meet the city's needs for parkland. Whether it's for program sports, sport fields, a regional kind of a park that other cities around us have, but parkland, a little bit of breathing room. If you look at the current ratio of parks in the city to residents, you'll note that there is one park that is a significant contributor to that ratio. And that's Fairview Park. Over 180 acres. But you can't do much there. Can't hardly do anything there. not that people do in normal parks. So what does that mean about our park ratio in this city? It's really, from a functional standpoint, it's even worse. So what do we do in this development? 14 acres of parkland, 4,000 units, 2.6 people per unit. You do the math, it's over 9,000 people. Nine times four would be 36 acres of parkland. We're showing 14. We're going backwards. We're going into the hole on parkland. Some of the public commented about, well, all the people that are gonna be in these units, where are they gonna kick a ball around, throw a Frisbee around, maybe have a picnic? Where are they gonna do that? Not on those 14 acres. But don't worry, this specific plan says we want 4.26 acres or an in lieu fee. You know what you're going to get. You're going to get a check. And what's that check going to be used for? To go buy parkland somewhere else? No. You're never getting parkland. You're getting a check. Oh, maybe it's a new swing set in a park that doesn't have one. Well, that's just lovely. Now, we're not taking care of the residents or the community with this plan. For 20 years, people are talking about affordable housing today. It's gonna take 20 years till we even get it. And to get it, we're sacrificing our parks, our roads, our environment. Wow. Now, this isn't the plan. I'm supporting a motion that says we need to go back, not to square one, but pretty close. Need to change a few things here. Staff has done a great job. I mean, the color pictures, the tables, the charts, the research, it's wonderful. It just reached the wrong conclusion, and that's what we need to fix.

All right. All right, commissioners, any final comments before we vote on substitute motion? All right, I will offer my comments. I completely agree with Commissioner Dixon in his instincts to want to try and spend more time and get this right. But that's not really our charge here, quite frankly. And I'm not going to support the substitute motion. Our job as the Planning Commission is to make a recommendation to Council. It's not to have the perfect plan. It's not to even have a compromise plan. It's just to give our advice. And I don't think that any additional amount of time is going to make a difference for us here. I'm just trying to be very practical about this. I recognize everybody came out here. We're at 9, 11 already, three hours of public comments. I appreciate and heard everything that everyone said. And I go back to... Over two years ago when we started this project, after one of the first town halls, and I had commented here that this site is the repository of everybody's hopes and fears. You remember that? And that's true again tonight. We hear some people who are apprehensive about potential impacts, whether it's traffic, parking, loss of open space, the golf course, to which I have some very personal opinions. And I share those with the vice chair and others. And then we have those who are much more hopeful about providing affordable housing and just general housing and trying to create a new community and thinking for the future generation. And so we have these competing interests within our community. Layer on top of that are city council's priorities, which are affordable housing and environmental sustainability and fiscal health. And this is very complicated. Where I... LAND IS ON WHAT DO WE AS A CITY HAVE CONTROL OVER AND THE ONE THING IS THIS PLAN WE'VE HEARD TONIGHT FROM STAFF THAT THERE ARE MANY OPTIONS FOR A DEVELOPER TO EXCEED WHAT THE UNIT COUNT MIGHT BE THERE'S TOO MANY UNKNOWNS FOR US TO TRY AND FIGURE OUT AND SO I THINK THE MOST EFFICIENT AND PRACTICAL WAY FORWARD HERE IS FOR US TO MAKE A RECOMMENDATION TO COUNCIL. IF THEY WANT ADDITIONAL TIME, I THINK THAT'S THE RIGHT REQUEST FOR THEM TO MAKE, AND THAT'S A POLICY CONSIDERATION FOR THEM.

AND I UNDERSTAND, AND JUST TO BRIEFLY GIVE YOU A FEW, AND NOT TO GET INTO ALL THE THINGS I'VE SAID PREVIOUSLY, BUT I THINK THAT THIS ENTIRE TIME, AND THERE HAS BEEN SOME PASSION AND SOME EMOTION INVOLVED BECAUSE OF FRUSTRATION AND THINGS LIKE THAT, BUT AS SOMEONE WHO has been involved in these sort of planning issues for quite some time. I have grave concerns that this will be overturned. It's not our final thing. It's with the council. I think that it's our responsibility to alert the council that there are some gaping, in my opinion, and not in one of a whole commission, there are some vulnerabilities here which may leave this open to challenge you look at the sonoma state hospital plan that was adopted in 2022 by the sonoma county board of supervisors it is still in litigation right and that was that was a much lower percentage of affordable housing and a massive amount of open space et cetera et cetera et cetera and i i think that we've been operating under a lot of assumptions and i think that it's alarming to me from a planning perspective to learn from a member of the public the full history of Merrimack. We didn't know that. We didn't. And that's information we didn't have through this three-year process. And I think that being on the side of staff in my private stuff, I understand you're given a task and you're given a scope of work. And you've done a tremendous job with that. This is not a criticism. I honestly was asking a question at the beginning of this process of where is the message from the sky coming from? Who is driving the policy choices that are being made? Because I watched every council meeting. I watched every planning commission meeting. I still don't have an answer as to why this was pushed through so quickly with so many unanswered questions. For instance, we got to see in a staff report that there was a proposal for a harbor frontage transportation hub. We never saw that until it came up, and we found out later that the staff was having conversations with the state and showing them PowerPoint presentations, things like that. My only point is that we have heard through this process, this elaborative process, that there are still a substantial number of questions. And you're right. City Council may at the meeting say, this cake is not baked. And that's their policy decision. But my motion was simply that from the professional judgment of the Planning Commission, which, of course, I'm one of many, is that this is not ready due to questions and revelations and things that have been brought up. And so that was where my substitute motion came from. I didn't want to make a motion at the beginning to not recommend it because of our role. And we're recommending whether or not this goes forward to the State Council and whether or not they approve that. My thought in making the substitute motion was that a simple, you know, However, a number of vote without the opportunity to say, maybe this isn't quite ready, would not be an appropriate thing to send to the council. So that's where I made my substitute motion. That's where it's coming from. I just think that there are some number issues we're dealing with. Like the 20% was affordable housing at Sonoma, 29% at Tustin Fields, that kind of thing. We're just working on assumptions that we've never And several of us have been asking questions from the very beginning of this process about where those came from. And we've never really received a fulsome answer. So that's where it came from, and I understand that.

I completely agree with where you're coming from. I'm not disagreeing with the interest or the intent. I'm just saying that for the purposes of this body, the council is going to hear everything that we've said. They're going to be able to take it for what it's worth if they want to dig in more I'm I think they're the appropriate body to be doing that so No, of course of course Okay, if there's no further comments, let's call for the question on the substitute motion. I Think we got a new voice roll call them.

Yes Commissioner Dixon Yes Commissioner Andrade Commissioner Martinez?

No.

Commissioner Klipak? No. Vice Chair Zick?

Yes.

Chair Harlan?

No.

Motion fails, 4-2.

Okay, so we are back to the original motion by Commissioner Andrade, seconded by Commissioner Martinez.

Okay. All right. Okay. You ready?

Yes. Okay.

Commissioner Klepak? Yes. Commissioner Dixon?

No.

Commissioner Andrade?

Yes.

Commissioner Martinez?

Yes.

Vice Chair Zick?

No.

Chair Harlan?

Yes.

Motion carries 4-2.

All right. I think we are due for a little recess. So it is 920. How about come back at 930? Yes. Okay, we're gonna start momentarily.

Cool.

All right, we are back on the record for public hearing item number two. Ms. Green, could you please read the title of that?

Yes, this is City of Costa Mesa Safety Element Update Climate Action and Adaptation Plan and Environmental Justice Policy Review. And the staff presentation by Ms. Gray, Contract Project Manager, and Ms. McGill, Planning Manager.

All right, welcome.

Thank you. Thank you for having me here again. I will be doing a portion of the presentation, and then I'll hand it over to Anna in order to do the environmental justice portion. But as was just introduced, we're going to be talking about a climate action adaptation plan, safety element update, as well as environmental justice policies tonight. So I know we reviewed this at the last Planning Commission meeting as part of a study session, but for those just joining tonight, we'll go through a bit of the background as well as provide a little bit on state law and ongoing planning efforts. We'll review the three planning documents as well as key components and outcomes, review public participation and community input, as well as look at revisions that are proposed to be implemented from the study session as well as public comment which ended on August 4th and then the next anticipated step would be City Council tentatively scheduled for September 15th. So just for a little bit of background, California has passed a number of laws requiring local agencies to address climate change, community resilience, public safety, as well as environmental justice. And these projects also implement several housing programs that were required as part of our six housing element cycle. specifically Housing Element Program 2G, which does commit the city to updating its safety element, as well as incorporating environmental justice policies into our general plan by December of this year. So in response to these requirements, the city did advance three initiatives, the Climate Action Adaptation Plan, the Safety Element Update, and the Environmental Justice Policy Update. Each one of these projects does have its own purpose, but all of them rely on a lot of the same technical information as well as community outreach. and policy framework, which is why we're bringing them forward for you at one time. In addition, repairing the three documents also helps to save on city resources and allows the city to develop a coordinated and consistent set of policies. So first, it's nice to define what exactly these three documents are. First and foremost, they are all policy documents. These are not zoning documents. And so for the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, it's a long-range strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while preparing Costa Mesa for the impacts of climate change. And the difference between a CAP single A and a double A is, if you're familiar with a single A CAP that has only mitigation measures where double A CAP which is what we're doing also includes adaptation for climate change impacts. A safety element is one of the required elements of our general plan and it's to address natural hazards, emergency preparedness and climate resilience using the city's latest hazard information. And then lastly, environmental justice policies. Cities actually have two options with these. We could adopt an environmental justice element or we can identify existing policies within our general plan and bolster them to be compliant with state law. And the purpose of it is it's intended to ensure that all residents have fair access to health, safe and livable communities regardless of income or neighborhood. So the purpose and the requirements and the outcomes of all three of these documents is really important to understand. On the left, you'll see all three of the proposed documents tonight. And then next to that is the primary purchase or purpose, sorry, state requirement in the middle and then outcome on the end. So for a climate action adaptation plan, it reduces or helps provide guidance on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as preparing for climate impacts. And although it is not specifically required by state law, it does support climate goals and it actually provides a roadmap for the city, looking at which resources would be best used first, and it creates basically a roadmap. And then the primary outcome is climate mitigation and adaptation strategies, as well as improving grant opportunities, and we'll get to that a little bit more. The safety element update is purpose is to protect the community from natural and environmental hazards. It is required by state law based on those sections there. And the outcome is to update the general plan safety policies to be consistent with our local hazard mitigation plan. And the city adopted our local hazard mitigation plan in 2022. And this is a follow-up to that. And then lastly, environmental justice policy updates. The purpose of that is to promote healthy, equitable, and resilient communities. This is a state requirement, as noted there. And the outcome is identifying existing environmental justice policies in the general plan, as well as amending or proposing new policies in order to meet those state law requirements. So the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan is going to be the first one we talk about. So that was initiated by the City Council in October of 2024. At that time, the City Council directed that the CAP focus on municipal leadership while for the community providing education, incentives, and partnership opportunities, but had identified that they would not... want new uh they wouldn't want new regulatory mandates as part of it public participation was a key an additional cap benefits is funding and grant opportunities as i mentioned a lot of times grant requirements you get extra points if you have a cap so that puts us in a better position to receive additional grant funds and then it also provides a roadmap to maximizing the city's impact and overall Resources and overall impact so it just means that we can better organize how we're going to implement some of these action items The cap does not propose new prescriptive regulations or development standards and the cap is provided to the Planning Commission for information purposes and discussion purposes and it does not require a formal recommendation to the City Council, which is why you don't see a resolution for recommendation for approval in your packets and The CAP does establish goals, objectives, and actions. And as far as the studies go, it also includes a community-wide greenhouse gas inventory, a future greenhouse gas emissions forecasting, greenhouse gas reduction scenario analysis, climate vulnerability assessment, climate adaptation strategy, as well as an implementation and monitoring program. The framework will help guide the city works programs, capital improvement programs, grant opportunities, and operational decisions. So what did we learn as part of putting this together? So what we learned was 63% of our greenhouse gas emissions here in Costa Mesa are generated by on-road transportation, or in other words, driving. And then 31% is generated by building energy, 4% off-road equipment, including construction and landscaping equipment. 1% to solid waste and 1% for water and wastewater. And as when we were out in the community and soliciting information and feedback, we heard a lot that residents were interested in increased renewable energy sources such as solar, expanded access to green spaces such as parks, playgrounds, and community gardens, improved transportation options such as biking, walking, and public transit, and increased efforts to compost and recycle, reduce waste within our community. In addition, we learned how much greenhouse gas emissions were actually generating. AND WHAT OUR LOCAL GAP IS. SO THIS DIAGRAM SHOWS THAT IF WE DIDN'T CHANGE ANYTHING AND IMPLEMENT ANY ACTION ITEMS, THAT BUSINESS AS USUAL IS GOING UP WITH POPULATION GROWTH TREND. AND THEN THE BLUE LINE SHOWS, YOU KNOW, ON ROAD TERRANCE EMISSIONS WITH EMISSION REDUCTION FROM STATE INITIATIVES WHICH THERE ARE A LOT. AND THEN YOU SEE ON THE RIGHT THERE'S A LOCAL GAP AND THAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ALL THE STATE INITIATIVES THAT ARE BEING IMPLEMENTED AND WHAT'S LEFT OVER IN ORDER TO MEET THE 2045 LEGISLATIVE REQUIREMENTS, OR GOALS, I SHOULD SAY. SO THE CLIMATE ACTION ADAPTATION PLAN FRAMEWORK, WHERE IT'S ACTUALLY BROKEN DOWN INTO EIGHT PRIMARY SECTORS, ON-ROAD TRANSPORTATION, ENERGY AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT, WATER AND WASTEWATER, SOLID WASTE, OFF-ROAD EQUIPMENT, PEOPLE AND COMMUNITIES, natural and urban lands, as well as municipal, meaning our operations. And the purpose of those is to protect our environment by reducing greenhouse gas and conserving natural resources, safeguard our communities by preparing for climate-ready hazards, support economic growth by promoting sustainable businesses and job creation, as well as plan for our future by aligning with state and federal goals and provide access to state grants. So I'm not gonna read all of these, but what this shows is each one of those sectors has a goal and a purpose as well as objectives and actions in order to meet each one of those. And those are detailed in the staff report. So here's all four of those. So for the Climate Action Adaptation Plan, each sector addresses different aspects of climate action, but it's important to note that they are all connected. So for example, expanding our urban tree canopy here in the city does help sequester carbon, but it also reduces urban heat island effects, improves air quality, enhances neighborhood aesthetics, and supports environmental justice objectives. In addition, investments into active transportation improve mobility and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and improve public health and increase community resilience. And the cap does include an implementation plan with 106 implementation action items. So additional benefits from the CAP and sustainability efforts. So CAP actions can reduce long-term operating costs as well as improve city facilities and infrastructure efficiency and enhance public safety. The city has already been implementing sustainable measures over a number of years and some of the things that they've done have resulted in fiscal savings is we converted 6,150 street lights to energy efficient LED fixtures. And that one change will save $1.6 million in electricity costs over the first 20 years and then over $200,000 annually thereafter. That project also reduces maintenance needs because you have to replace those bulbs less often. It improves nighttime visibility as well as public safety. Likewise there was a led light upgrade to several of our parks that provide an estimated annual savings cost of over five thousand six hundred and ninety four dollars per year while also reducing maintenance demands in Addition the city has received almost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in grant funding plus a seventy thousand dollar rebate for the City Hall electric vehicle charging project We've been awarded 250. I'm sorry It is late. I apologize. I know it's later for you guys, but $25,670 toward three electrical municipal vehicles and $180,000 toward zero emission shuttle for our senior center. So since this was before you at the last meeting, there were several things that we're proposing to change as part of the cap. So the first comment that we heard was 20 action items in two years, which is an initiative as part of the climate action plan. And it is currently located in our appendix, but the request of planning commission, we will be bringing that forward into Chapter 5 and I do want to note that in the staff report it says it is in the cap But we're still in the process of making those changes So just want to be clear that it will be it's just not in there yet, but it will be added As far as the environmental benefits matrix it was asked that we have additional information on that if we implement certain things how much of a return or impact can we have on our greenhouse gas emissions and and describing the environmental benefits of implementing those action items, and that is also in the appendices, but we will be bringing that forward to Chapter 5 as well. The table that is in there right now does not identify the 20 items in two years, so we would be looking at highlighting those also to make it more readable. We received two letters from the coastal corridor Coalition both of which we will be making modifications based on their comments which are cap related and then implementation measures there are a variety of them and those are all included in attachment for and Then in order to make sure everything's copacetic and it all goes together. There's some minor technical cleanup items as well and So the next item is our safety element update. And the safety element is the city's primary policy document for protecting residents, businesses, and infrastructure from natural and human-caused hazards. State law does require that the safety element address flooding, earthquakes, fire, emergency preparedness, as well as disaster response. New legislation does require cities to incorporate climate adaptation and update hazard information in their general plans. And that's based on Senate Bill 379 and Senate Bill 1035. State law also encourages consistency between the city safety element as well as the local hazard mitigation plan. As I noted previously, we did adopt our local hazard mitigation plan in 2022. That does address a lot of the natural hazards, community vulnerabilities, and there was a large comprehensive effort in order to get that document approved. So incorporating the local hazard mitigation plan into the safety element does ensure that the general plan reflects current information and maintains consistency amongst the city's long-term policy documents. So key updates to the safety element are integrating that local hazard mitigation plan, adding climate adaptation planning, updating hazard data and technical information, addressing flooding, drought, extreme heat and wildfire, strengthen emergency preparedness and resiliency, and align safety element with a cap and the current state requirements. So with that, I'm gonna pass it over to Ana.

Thank you, Amber. Um, just in the interest of time and where we are in this point in the meeting, I'm going to go through these a little bit quickly and cause you've heard a lot of this already at the study session. So environmental justice planning seeks to ensure that all residents have equitable access to clean, healthy and safe environments and that they have meaningful, meaningful opportunities to participate in public decision processes. So to that end, the overarching goals are on the slide here. As a reminder, the city received a LEAP grant in early 2026 to implement a lot of our housing element programs, and that also included updating our environmental justice policies. It originally had a timeline of June 30th of this year, but it was extended through SCAG, so cities now have until September 30th to complete the work plan that's identified in the grant. environmental justice policies are required and there's two different Senate bills and the trigger is when you update more than two elements of your general plan so this year so far we have made updates to our land use element to our housing element we're going to update our housing element again the safety element is in front of you so here we are we need to include environmental justice policies we need to identify policies in the general plan that promote environmental justice. They have to address the topics that are on the right side of the screen, and they also need to prioritize areas that are defined as EJ communities. What is an EJ community? So overall, it's communities that are disproportionately impacted by environmental pollutions, hazards, and degradations, or been burdened by socio and economic factors. You can see on the map here we currently have six census tracts that are considered EJ communities. Mapping occurs yearly. The policies, the draft policies as written as you'll see, identify EJ community areas. They don't specifically give geographic locations and that ensures that those policies are still appropriately applied even if those census tracts change and update. Overall, the process was to identify existing policies in the general plan that constitute as EJ policies. Host public workshops and get community feedback and then draft and modify additional policies to address state requirements and community input So here's a summary of those existing EJ policies The symbol that you see here has been applied to existing general plan policies that can also constitute as EJ policies They're in eight of the ten general plan elements What is attached as your approval document is a very long list. And so what we also included in the packet is like a spreadsheet that gives a reference guide of all the policies in each chapter that are either existing that constitutes an EJ policy, have been revised in red text, or just a brand new policy so all the text is red. They cover all of the topics that is needed under EJ. And then there's also areas that need to be strengthened. Okay, then we need to meet state law. So a little bit of detail is added here. That came out of an audit that was conducted and then address community concerns and input. We talked a little bit about what those were at the study session, but things that we heard were like increase urban farming, greening and tree canopy, protect natural areas, create better connections to cultural and recreational resources. Okay. Modified policies are here. So this is what we heard from community input prior to Planning Commission input at the study session. I won't walk through those one by one. We can come back to them if you have questions. And then changes made since the Planning Commission study session. So we received really great input from the Planning Commission. There's no substantive changes to the actual EJ policy framework, but we did make revisions. To existing policies or to add new policies to address the input received so one policy in the open space and a recreational element prioritizes urban agricultural opportunities including urban farms community gardens and farmers markets prioritizing those in EJ community areas revising an existing policy in the confirmation element to maintain education programs around recycling and again prioritizing that in EJ COMMUNITIES AND REVISING A PROPOSED POLICY AND A NEW POLICY IN THE SAFETY ELEMENT TO PRIORITIZE PUBLIC INFORMATION AND EDUCATION RELATED TO EXTREME HEAT AND COOLING CENTERS IN EJ COMMUNITIES AND PRIORITIZE LOCATION OF THOSE COOLING CENTERS AND EMERGENCY SERVICE RESPONSE CENTERS IN EJ COMMUNITIES OR UNDERSERVED NEIGHBORHOODS.

ALL RIGHT. SO NOW FOR PUBLIC PARTICIPATION. So there was a number of events that we attended in order to help spread public education and awareness and hear from the community. So we did kick off public participation with our Earth Day celebration in 2025. And then we also attended on Earth Day 2026. 2025, we introduced it. 2026, we came back with policies and, hey, here's what we're doing. And Here's where that hard work went to for the last year. We also did concerts in the park and bicycle training, had a number of engagement activities. We had a public open house on April 30th. And then the city's outreach efforts were conducted as part of the cap with EJ incorporated into that where we could. So the public review of the draft documents, the cap policies were provided and made available to the public from April 23rd through May 26th. During that window, we did receive one comment letter. The draft safety element and draft EJ apologies were available for public review starting on July 1st and then the entire draft cap was available for public review starting on July 20th and all public review periods did end on August 4th. We did receive a total of 12 comment letters. So with that, that completes staff's proposal, and we recommend approval as stated in the staff report. Staff is available to answer any questions, and I did want to note that our representative from Dudek, who is the consultant who prepared the cap for the city, is available online, and that is Sarah. So if we have any technical questions, Sarah is joining us since Jennifer can't be here tonight. Jennifer's on vacation, but Sarah lives in the Bay Area. So we're very glad she has stuck with us tonight.

Okay, thank you very much. Commissioners, any questions?

Vice Chair Zick. Yes, thank you. Always a pleasure to hear your presentations, Ms. Gregg. Could you turn to the slide that had the census tract map? So I see what you describe here as the definition of an EJ community. Who did the determination that these census tracts met the criteria for an EJ community?

Thank you for that question, Commissioner Zick. They're developed by the state, but I can do a little bit of research to find out exactly which organization, if that's of interest to you.

I don't really need to know the organization. So are you saying that the state told you which census tracts in our city were EJ communities? That's correct. Okay. So then related to that, I don't want to pick a particular census tract, but if I have a particular census tract in mind, how do I know, how do we know as a city that when we have sufficiently got them out of this definition? How do we know when we're done and they're not an EJ community anymore because we did all the good work?

Yeah, that's a great question, Commissioner Zick. So I'm just looking it up here. It's updated typically annually by the California Environmental Protection Agency. WE WILL MAINTAIN THAT ON OUR WEBSITE SO WE WILL MAKE SURE THAT WE HAVE A SUSTAINABILITY WEB PAGE AND MOVING FORWARD WE WILL UPDATE THOSE MAPS ANNUALLY TO MAKE SURE THAT RESIDENTS KNOW IF THERE ARE ANY CHANGES.

SO CONCEIVABLY NEW CENSUS TRACKS WILL POP UP BY WHATEVER METHODOLOGY THE STATE USES?

YEAH. CURRENTLY THERE'S SIX CENSUS TRACKS. IT COULD BE THE CASE THAT THERE ARE LESS IN FUTURE. OF COURSE IT COULD ALSO BE THE CASE THAT THERE ARE MORE BUT HOPEFULLY WITH THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ALL THE CAP MEASURES AND EJ POLICIES the goal is that that will reduce over time.

Okay. And then I don't know what the slide number was, but you had a slide number related to EJ that showed on the right hand side, the specific areas that you had to address. Could you find that slide?

Are you seeing it on your end now?

Yeah, that's it. Um, So when it says you need to address the topic, it just means you've gotta either find an existing policy statement that kinda hits on that, or if you don't have one, then you've gotta come up with some to specifically hit these different topic areas. Correct. Okay, so when I looked at this matrix of the EJ policies, and I just happened to, Look at the one about ensuring access to healthy foods. Just pick that one. Cause it seemed like everybody's got the same access to healthy foods. So kind of curious how the state uses that in its algorithm. But what we have in a policy now is we're going to try to attract and retain full service grocery stores. Sounds like an admirable policy hits on the idea of healthy foods, whether or not it is directly responsive to whatever that issue is. Because maybe the state has a metric in mind that as to what that means, like you can walk to a grocery store within half a mile, or it's gotta be a full service grocery store, not a Trader Joe's or a mini market, or it's gotta be, but if we don't really know, then we really don't know if this policy statement is responsive, but there's no penalty if we don't quite get it right. It just shows up again as an EJ community, right?

The state law isn't really prescriptive on how those topics get addressed fully So we're kind of doing our best to understand and implement them But for example Commissioner Andrade had some comments at the study session about including farmers markets Yeah in different like more local community-based access to food. So hopefully the multitude of different options help to address it and that topic in full okay, and I

Hopefully it's unlike HCD, but when the state gets this stuff back do they look at it and go? Good job Check the box and we're off the hook or do they look at this and go now.

It's not really responsive to the topic area That's a good question commissioners X so it is a program in our housing element so each CD will be reviewing it as an implementation program and They are aware that we're holding these hearings and that we're going through the process of adoption. It might be when we submit our full package of rezoning and revised housing element, they may have additional comments for us to address. We will see and we'll report back to the Planning Commission and City Council as needed if that is the case. Got it.

Okay. And then I think I just had one. Well, maybe a couple of questions about this cap. So you indicate in the staff report that this is not required by state law, us having our own cap, not required by state law. So as much as I love all the hard work you do, why did we come up with one?

So the reason why we did the cap is even though it's not required is encouraged. The reason why it's encouraged is because it does bring together almost like a three legged stool. We have the local hazard mitigation plan. We have the safety element we have. the environmental justice component of it, and all of those things are kind of living in three different documents, but none specifically address climate change, greenhouse gas emissions like the CAP does. So the purpose of the CAP is to look at all of those things as one, which it did, and come up with a good roadmap for the city in order to address those specific items, reducing our greenhouse gas, as well as adaptation for climate change.

Doesn't the state have a CAP? and doesn't that have all those same elements?

It isn't local specific and I can defer to Sarah in a minute to elaborate on that, but each city is still required in order to meet a certain requirement in order to get it to the state goals of 2045.

Okay, I'll accept that. So I'm looking at this document that you gave us previously. And in it, it talked about just a couple of small questions. It talked about extreme heat days. I think we've had a few of those recently, maybe today even. And it said that we've gone from a historical average of three days per year to projected 11 to 25 days per year in the year 2100. Now, if we do all the stuff that's in this document, there's an awful lot of stuff. We're going to get back to three days. Is that what you're telling me? Because I'm going to come back in 2100 and I'm going to look you up.

I hope you do. I'm going to defer to Sarah on that. The goal is to get us down to lower greenhouse gas emission levels. so that way we don't keep increasing the number of extreme hot days that we have. In addition, between now and 2100, or 2100, right, we do know that we are experiencing additional hot days, particularly humidity, and for Coastal region which we are a lot of people still have air conditioning So it's great to prepare for those cooling centers now not even looking at 2,100 Yeah, I'll accept that answer to on that same page of the document.

It's in the executive summary you talk about the city's targets and of reducing an additional 154,700 metric tons of CO2 equivalent, and then by 2030, another number. And do we just get credit if we get lower? Or do we have to hit those?

Those numbers? So the goal is to hit those numbers.

I know that's the goal. I understand what a goal in college try is.

Yes, yeah.

But that didn't work with Rena. There was penalties involved. So tell me about this.

So for that one, I am going to defer to Sarah with Dudek because she's more versed in this one.

Okay, well, hold on. She might be able to hit on a couple of these. Okay. Later in that document, where you show, and I'll show you what I'm looking at, the two biggest areas of contributing to our emissions, 63% on-road transportation, 31% emissions. And under that on-road transportation, objective T5 talks about smart growth. We might have had some conversation about that or lack thereof earlier this evening. But in particular it talks about mixed use development. Now if that's the priority and if that's what we need to do to address 63% of our community's emissions to get down that big goal that we have, then help me understand why we would approve projects like One Metro West, FDC, The Hive, which turned out not to be an active project, but people were drooling over it. None of those were mixed use developments. So if that's what we need, why are we not advocating for that instead of what we are advocating for?

Thank You commissioners that I think the city is advocating for those things and this is a good case of competing priorities There are state law at play that allows for housing only projects there is argument for mixed use larger than just on a site and THE CITY DOESN'T HAVE A LOT OF DISCRETION TO REQUIRE A MIXED USE PROJECT, BUT WE CAN ENCOURAGE IT.

I ACCEPT THAT AND I REMEMBER USING THAT TERM ENCOURAGING IN A DIFFERENT CONTEXT ONCE. OKAY, ON THE BUILDING SIDE, REDUCING ENERGY DEMANDS IN BUILDINGS, IN TERMS OF THE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS, Does that mean that what we're trying to do is get, I'm not, this isn't a leading question, so if I'm wrong, tell me. Does that mean we're trying to get buildings out of using natural gas for heating and cooling and using electricity for heating and cooling? Is that what that means, E1?

Yes, that's correct. So the way to reduce the greenhouse gas is it's less greenhouse gas if you have more electricity-based

Appliances versus natural gas yeah, and that certainly would be true locally But the electricity comes from somewhere, and I guess we just make an assumption that how they produce it is Contributes less to greenhouse gas than if we have it locally Yes Okay, that's all I've got thank you very much for your time

Any other questions of staff Commissioner cleat back question in that same vein I Saw in here that it on the building electrification topic it talks about supporting electrification where feasible I've electrified my home. I know that Those appliances are much more efficient than their gas counterparts even when the electricity comes from gas or coal it still is cleaner than having natural gas appliances and So would we put together incentive programs? How would we support and encourage electrification?

Yeah, so luckily there are a lot of state programs and, you know, can be federal programs, but a lot of state programs that actually encourage us. So we would be looking to our utilities. They provide a lot of those grants and funnel them down through customers. And so we would be working with them in order to help promote those rebate programs on our website. We as a city are not anticipating providing those rebates, but we want to make sure everyone is aware of those rebates and how to get them.

Okay. Or even put together local contractors and vendors that are familiar. Because I know when I was shopping for heat pump water heaters, it was difficult to find an installer locally that was familiar with doing that. So if we could put together some kind of list of installers and contractors locally, I think that would be helpful.

Great. Thank you.

Right.

Any other questions?

Just along those same lines. Go ahead, Commissioner Dixon. So this is not an actionable thing. There's no regulatory action or any of that stuff, but we have 106 actions, right? So what's the interrelationship there? Because if there's a city-initiated action that's independent of any particular development project that also does have an impact on whatever, so what would... How does that action part work? Because there's general plan goals, there's general plan policies, but talk to me about how those actions work.

Yeah, so it's a very good question. Thank you very much. And I want to make sure I'm understanding it correctly. But first point is that these are not general plan policy or actions. So you're trying to see, okay, if we're doing these things, what's... So what's a ramification of doing them or what's the incentive?

This is going to unilaterally decide that, well, you know what? We need to get rid of more on road transportation. So let's just take a lane away. And that's part of our CAAP and we don't need to do anything else. This and there's the CAAP by the way, it's not a qualified CAAP. It's not an actual CAAP.

It just doesn't have any IR. That's correct.

The ones that got sued in San Diego. Exactly. So I have a great deal of hesitancy. with something that has all of these aspirational policies, which is what the court called San Diego's and why it overturned it, that are tied to an action that we're sort of sliding through that's going to end up greatly impacting residents. And we already see them all over the place, like things that have happened that are slowing down traffic and all the other things. And that's an opinion I know I have that maybe some don't share, but it's something I hear quite a bit. So that's where I'm coming from is this. I don't want to It seems like I just want to make sure these actions to reduce. And by the way, the 63%, I'm not sure where that comes from, because the greater LAOC in 2024 was 55%. So are we already pinning that too high? I mean, is that a latest SCAG number? I saw it was 2023 in the report. And to that, Orange County is developing and has already developed its own cap. And the state only requires us to piggyback on the county. It doesn't require us to have our own. And I think something, how many cities in LA, in Orange County, have a cap of the 34?

Several do, and several more are working on them. Right.

But the vast majority don't. And so I just want to make sure we're not pigeonholing ourselves and we're not putting ourselves in a position where we're going to be incurring a great deal of cost. The cost savings in this report are great as far as the LED solar lights and all the other stuff, but if we're saving $1.4 million over 20 years by doing LED lights but spending $1 million on a cap, so that's kind of where I'm... I just want to make sure that the action part of this is not going to be saddling us with actions which MAYBE DIDN'T SUSTAIN PUBLIC REVIEW AND PUBLIC INPUT.

IF YOU WANT TO JUMP IN FIRST.

THANK YOU. COMMISSIONER DIXON, I JUST WANTED TO CLARIFY THAT WHEN THIS WENT TO CITY COUNCIL IN FEBRUARY FOR A STUDY SESSION, THEIR DIRECTION TO US WAS TO MAKE SURE THAT THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE CITY, MUNICIPALITY REQUIREMENTS WERE PRETTY CLEAR AND OUTLINED, BUT REQUIREMENTS FOR THE COMMUNITY, FOR DEVELOPERS, more incentive based and that was part of one of the reasons for deviating from a qualified cap but also kind of has been the direction and how the framework and the policies are written so I just wanted to clarify that because This I don't know that we explained that well enough in the study session two weeks ago And I wanted to make sure that that was clear in addition to that there's lots of different ways that we plan on making sure that this doesn't sit on a shelf and AND THAT IS IMPLEMENTED. SO WE HAVE YEARLY IMPLEMENTATION, REPORTING, WE GOT SOME FEEDBACK AT THE LAST PLANNING COMMISSION, BRING IT TO PLANNING COMMISSION OR CITY COUNCIL ANNUALLY SO THAT WE CAN SHARE THE UPDATES AND WHAT WE'RE DOING AND PROVIDE ABILITY FOR INPUT. IN ADDITION TO THAT, FOR DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS, COMMISSIONER ZICK RAISED A GOOD QUESTION. HOW DO WE ACTUALLY INCENTIVIZE MIXED USE PROJECTS AND MAKE SURE THEY ACTUALLY GET DONE? It will be included as a part of the staff report and our entitlement review for them to show consistency with our cap. And so kind of like the general plan section, like how do they meet the general plan policies? How are they supporting and how are they furthering that? And that gives you another piece of consideration in an entitlement project and hopefully a way for us to kind of push that even further. AGAIN, THE CITY COUNCIL DIRECTION WAS TO INCENTIVIZE, SO WE'RE TAKING THAT DIRECTION AND FINDING OPPORTUNITIES WHERE WE CAN ENCOURAGE THOSE DEVELOPMENTS TO HAPPEN.

SO WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD ON THAT IS, SO LET'S SAY I DO WANT TO HAVE A NATURAL GAS STOVE, RIGHT? WELL, AM I GOING TO FACE A MORE STRINGENT REVIEW THAN SOMEONE WHO'S INCENTIVIZED TO HAVE AN ELECTRIC STOVE? AS SOMEONE WHO WENT THROUGH EIGHT ROUNDS OF DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, I HAVE VERY LITTLE PATIENCE non-objective hard standards in anything development related?

Yeah, so that is in line with the City Council's direction where it is incentive-based. So to be very clear, we wouldn't deny a project if it wasn't fully electrified. And there's lots of reasons why you may have natural gas in your building. For example, commercial sites, commercial kitchens, they really do need, in often cases, natural gas. A lot of medical uses in some cases need it. So we didn't go the route of like adopting reach codes, which would have been the more stringent requirement-based approach. This is more show us how you meet the cap, show us the intent, show us where you're doing it. And there's a variety of options. So if you're not electrifying your house, maybe you're planting more landscaping, there could be a trade-off between showing your consistency.

Right. We were calling for making green building code mandatory in 2011 and 2012, and it still hasn't happened. So I don't have a tremendous amount of patience for things that are going to impact the home builder, as opposed to things that the city could be doing, like planting more trees. We were doing it mandatory. We were driving around offering people trees back in 2015, 2015. I don't know if that's happened in a long time. I saw Councilmember Reynolds talking about that. like it's a new idea. We were doing that in 2015, 2014, 2013. And we would provide a tree. If you said you wanted a tree, the sea would show up and put a tree in your yard. I got one for $80. It's now 50 feet high. So there's a lot of things that we could be doing without a fancy, expensive cap that we're not doing. And so it's just I'm a little concerned about sort of how this is going to actually go out into the world, whereas it's not going to be something that's sort of kind of organic and we're moving forward collaboratively. It kind of sounds like it's going to be, you know, there's negative implications if you don't kind of go along with this trend as opposed to without, A FULL ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW AND ALL THE OTHER STUFF. SO THAT'S THE GENESIS OF THAT COMMENT. AND IF IT'S PURELY INCENTIVIZING WITH NO BACK END TO DISINCENTIVIZING, COOL. BUT I'M JUST WORRIED THAT'S NOT GOING TO WORK.

THERE'S NO MORE QUESTIONS HERE. COMMISSIONER MARTINEZ, ANY QUESTIONS OF STAFF? IS HE STILL WITH US?

You're still breaking up, Commissioner Martinez. I don't know if you have a connection. Hello?

There you go. That's better. Any questions of staff?

All right. Can you guys hear me?

Still a little breaky-uppy. Okay.

All right. I'm going to open the public hearing and open public comments if anybody in chambers wishes to speak. MS. GREEN, DO WE HAVE ANYBODY ON ZOOM OR PHONE?

NO, MR. CHAIR.

OKAY. I'M GOING TO CLOSE PUBLIC COMMENT. COMMISSIONER MARTINEZ, ANY LAST QUESTIONS OF STAFF? OKAY.

I HAVE A COUPLE OF QUESTIONS OR MAYBE MORE JUST CLARIFYING Wasn't the, I thought at some point part of it or I don't know if the whole cap was also grant funded. I recall when one of the presentations.

Would you get somebody for preparing the cap as well? Yes.

Yeah. And now some of these changes, is it just for the EJ areas or the whole city? EJ zones or the whole city?

So the measures that are identified within the Chapter 4 that has it, that's within the cap itself, actually not the EJs. And then the EJs are handled separately through the general plan document.

And the EJ policies, they're general plan policies, so they're applicable citywide, but it will say something like give priority to EJ, extra focus. So let's say we're considering an improvement project, we might look at, SENSES TRACKS AND SEE IF THERE'S AN APPROPRIATE PROJECT THAT CAN BE DONE FIRST IN THAT AREA BEFORE LOOKING ELSEWHERE IN THE CITY. YES.

YEAH. AND AGAIN, I APPRECIATE YOU INCLUDING SOME OF THE POINTS THAT WE TALKED ABOUT IN THE LAST PLANNING COMMISSION AS ONE LIVING IN THE EJ ZONE AND TALKING TO MANY OF MY NEIGHBORS. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY WELCOME. SLOWING DOWN OUR STREETS, CONTINUING TO MAKE IT SAFE TO Is really important reducing pedestrian deaths. I think we could all be on board on on doing so Especially appreciate the Aspects of expanding green space cooling centers because yes being a predominantly I mean again, and I'm just thinking of District 4 and I'm sure it pours over to district 5 as well as a predominantly renter community Central air is a foreign concept. We don't have central air, plain and simple. So enduring the summer right now is quite a challenge. If people have the capacity to install an AC unit in their apartment, maybe one bedroom gets cooled, and that's it, right? And you're very selective. What time of day are you going to turn that thing on? Because we know what electricity rates looking like nowadays right because we all know right individual renters pay individually for their meter usage it's not a one bill for a whole rental apartment complex so it's really critical to provide options for the community to get out and find cooling spaces whether that's a park whether that's maybe a shaded garden or or again, cooling stations. The issue also, I know there was a question about why are we having access to healthy, nutritious food. There's many areas in the community that within walking distance, you have to drive to get to the closest supermarket. You can't just walk in an area where healthy, nutritious food is easily accessible. and affordable. Um, you may have a liquor store close by, which is again, just a lot of junk food and some drinks, you know, but you won't find a tomato and some healthy vegetables in there. So that is why I requested for that because again, it's a opportunity to continue to build our, our city up to, to be healthy. Um, and, um, I appreciate some of the questions, right? Why are we doing this? Why is this important? And I'm glad to hear that city council made the call to action to get this going. Um, But not just only to meet, you know, California or the state requirements, but just the ultimate goal is to improve quality of life. Period. Right. We have opportunities to submitting a flood safety plan. I mean, I'm sure we all want to live in a flood proof city and a city that is not overheating. So right. Hearing that many of our community on the EJ zones and beyond are have the island heat island effect, right? That's really important. And also really great to hear that, sure, it's not a requirement, but to know that Costa Mesa is one of the cities that is leading the way and taking this seriously, again, to provide quality of life for everyone, regardless of what neighborhood you have, regardless of how much electricity you can afford to have central, regardless of can you afford a, you know, private property to live in that has those, um, accommodations. Um, and yeah, um, again, I appreciate also the, I know that wasn't, didn't do deck help us define some of the EJ zones. Isn't, wasn't that part of the, or the, right. Uh, I recall a community session that

Yeah, they put out maps that showed the existing census tract areas, and then community members provided feedback in those specific areas, concerns, ambitions, things, objectives, things to consider. Okay. But they were based on the California state agencies that put those tracts together.

Yeah, I mean, and I think you had it right on that slide. You know, the definition of those zones are populated by residents that are burdened by social and economic factors so Again, just thank you for taking the effort and putting this together And thank you for having Costa Mesa be one of the cities that taking Priority and improving quality of life for everyone in our community.

So that's all Okay Commissioner Martinez back on there Let's see if this works.

And Mr. Chair, we do have someone who raised their hand. They just didn't do it quite quick enough.

Okay. Let's reopen the public comment then and take that for the record.

Did you guys hear me?

Yes.

All right. Thank you. Wow. I sat through all of that. I appreciate it. John, Anjali, Robert, Karen, David that's on the call, Johnny, Tarquin, and Carrie, you guys have done a great job in the planning commission. Just as a public, and Jeff, appreciate it. Just as a public viewing, really had an opportunity to hear everything and just wanted to You know, let everyone know where we started, I think it was stated in 2024 we met on site in the auditorium. And did this whole form. And I got to say, I think everybody's nailed it where there's more confusion and more chaos that has been created since then. um a lot of as good as come out of it as far as the input um and i'm just staying on as a public servant citizen and just to hear my voice uh be be heard uh And in regards to everyone, I mean, there's traffic, there's schooling, there's green space, there's the cap. Everything that goes into this, I think everyone's kind of hit it on the head. We're trying to understand from the state what you need from the city where we can accomplish it.

that's all i gotta say all right thank you very much all right we'll close public comment again uh commissioner martinez are you back on any questions of staff yes all right uh yes some questions of staff um i i think first of all i want to start with um

There is an appendix mentioned for the climate action plan that was not provided to us for this review. And I know that we're not issuing a formal recommendation to the city council, but I wanted to know when we would be able to review this appendix F. Okay.

So the appendix F is still being drafted currently, and that is the fiscal analysis of the cap. And what that does is it looks at the cost of implementing certain measures of this and potential opportunities for grants associated with that as well. And that will be presented to the city council, not to the planning commission.

Okay. I mean, since we're looking at the cap, I think it would be appropriate to, you know, just bring it back, a receiving file, have us take a look at it so that we can just see it since we're looking at this cap. All right. I wanted to ask about EJ communities. Mapping... occurs yearly. So I wanted to know the process for which we will be informed of the new EJ communities or when an EJ community is removed.

Thank You Commissioner Martinez we are continuing to host a sustainability website that includes information about environmental justice policies and communities so we'll continue to update the city's website when those changes are adopted and the updated maps

All right. And my last question is about two specific policies in the safety element, which can be found on either page 783 or 865. Pick whichever one you like. It's at the bottom of both of them. They both talk about two egress methods for... Development, I suppose. And I wanted to ask, does that mean two egress methods out of a neighborhood or out of a single building?

I'm so sorry. Can you state which policy number that is? I just want to make sure we're looking at the correct one.

Yes, that's S2.28 and S2.29. Okay.

Those have to do with, for 2-9, that has to do with routes, so that would be streets.

And then... So, Commissioner Martinez, those requirements are to ingress and egress for neighborhoods, but I will also note for clarification, the fire department also has a policy requirement for two access points in and out of a building for certain buildings of certain sizes, like a certain unit count. And I can't remember off the top of my head what that is, but happy to follow up with you on that.

OK, so just want to be absolutely clear. These policies are about, let's call it neighborhoods and not singular buildings.

Yes, correct.

OK, thank you. Those are my questions.

OK, great. I'll now close the item.

May I have a motion?

We're receiving and filing, right?

No, it's a recommendation.

My apologies.

Motion by Commissioner Andrade.

That we find the proposed safety element update environmental justice policy update in our exempt for CEQA pursuant to CEQA guidelines and adapt the resolution recommended to City Council.

Okay, motion by Commissioner Andrade. Do we have a second? Second. Second by Commissioner Martinez. Would you like to speak to your motion? Commissioner Andrade?

Yes.

Go ahead.

It's a long time coming. Thank you so much for, again, all the great work, the community input that was incorporated into this. the outreach. I appreciate all the red coating that was really helpful to see how what the changes were and incorporating some of the key stakeholders and experts that provided input.

All right. Commissioner Martinez you want to speak to your second.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This series of documents, the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, the updated safety element, and the environmental justice policies throughout will help us out in planning and supporting our environmental justice communities and help us mitigate our ever-changing climate and our warming world. I know today was an especially hot day here in Sacramento, where I am. Yeah, this climate action plan is, the implementation measures in here are not necessarily a requirement these are the suggestions for how to reach our greenhouse gas emission goals our emission reduction goals each of these things in here will require further discussion about how we implement them how we move forward with them and how we eventually reach those goals. So I think like I said last meeting, like it's possible some of the items in here that they won't be implemented. And that's why we do just a little bit of an overreach. for how many metric tons of carbon that we're going to try and mitigate. So there's a lot of things in here which absolutely will reduce greenhouse gas emissions if we implement them. For example, mixed-use development, like One Metro West, which, if memory serves, included an office component, like FDC, where we're allowing commercial development. These items, if built, mean that people don't have to drive from as far away. They can just pop on downstairs and get their groceries if there's a grocery store down there or whatever is downstairs. Reducing the amount of vehicle usage means that we're reducing our biggest source of emissions, our 63%, our very big one. And we can do that in a lot of different ways that are promoted in this climate action and adaptation plan, that are promoted in our active transportation plan, that are promoted in our pedestrian master plan. So this is another continuation of all of our plans that are going towards similar goals and looking forward to further discussions in the future about how we can actually implement it. Thank you.

Thank you. Any final comments, commissioners? If not, let's call for the question.

Commissioner Martinez?

Yes.

Commissioner Dixon?

No.

Commissioner Klepak?

Yes.

Commissioner Andrade?

Yes.

Vice Chair Zik?

Yes. Yes.

Chair Harlan?

Yes.

Motion carries 5-1.

All right. We have no old business or new business this evening. It takes us to departmental reports. Mr. Yang, public services? No. No public works reports, Mr. Chairman. Okay. Thank you. Excellent. Ms. McGill, you're the ranking member of development services. Any report?

Thank you. Just to note that we will be holding a special Planning Commission meeting next week on Monday. We are going to be bringing a revised housing element to you as well as a study session item on the neighborhoods where we all belong. So stay tuned. It's going to continue to be a big month for advanced planning policy. And we'll see you back here soon.

You'll be serving drinks next Monday.

I know. Close out the month with a bang. I love it.

And Mr. City Attorney, Mr. Preziosi, any report?

No, thank you, Chair.

Okay. We are adjourned.