Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

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e e all right folks we're ready good evening this is the regular meeting of the Planning Commission of the city of desert hot springs for Tuesday February 11th 2025 and uh let's start with a call to order and swearing in of planning commissioners good evening so for members of the public so we have three brand new Commissioners um to the Planning Commission as well as two returning Commissioners um so we will start this meeting off with the oath um if I can have all five of you uh please stand and raise your right hand okay do you uh Theodore Parker Christopher Wagstaff James Nel Robert row and Joseph Lombardo do you solemly swear or affirm that you will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the State of California against all enemies foreign and domestic I will that you will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of California will that you take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion do and that you will well and Faithfully

discharge the duties upon which you're about to enter well thank you and congratulations thank you all right folks our next thing on the agenda is the selection of chairman and vice chairman um we're being asked to appoint a commissioner to serve as chairman for 2025 and a commissioner to serve as Vice chairman is there anyone who wants to make a motion I'd like to make a motion I would like to nominate James nandell as the chairman and Chris Wagstaff as the vice chairman second members of the commission if we can take each um separately okay James andelle is Chairman okay so this person one I'm sending over is for chairman so the buttons on your screen so uh commissioner R if you would please tap on move it'll show up one second sorry technical difficulties okay now you to see the buttons okay so that was commissioner BR and an a second seconded by uh commissioner Wagstaff please

vote commissioner Parker okay motion passes unanimously thank you um all right Pledge of Allegiance oh I'm sorry Mr chair um the uh Vice chair oh I'm sorry if we could ask for a motion for nomination and motion for vice chair I nominate uh Chris waga for vice chair okay so you hit move okay is there a second second yeah okay so you push second nothing's coming up I could do that on my okay okay please vote motion passes unanimously okay now we say the Pledge of Allegiance U commissioner lamardo you said that you would lead us allegiance 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 all right all right so we uh need to approve the agenda we need a motion approving the agenda the agenda and a second does anyone want to move to approve the

agenda I motion to approve the agenda all right we have a second you have toit move who was the second who's who seconded it did you second it can push it push uh the button for a second is moved by there we go now four oh okay there we go all right so now we vote motion passes unanimously okay all right um next on the agenda is uh Planning Commission regular meeting minutes from the last meeting of November 12th and since three of us are new we're not going to approve these we could go we could go ahead for the two of you who are here um the minutes do need to be approved eventually so uh it would just be the two of you to vote and that would be absolutely fine for the approval of minutes okay then I make a motion to approve the minutes what was that I'm sorry did I make a motion does yeah does Chris make a motion to approve just make a motion to approve second and then honestly it's just the two of you voting okay all right and with three extensions okay so you made a motion to approve and I'm going to Second it okay once it shows up it's a weird one yeah okay Okay Okay so we've approved the minutes um the next next thing on the agenda is public comments all right at this time pursuant to the brown act any person may comment on matters of general interest within the subject matter jurisdiction of the

Planning Commission not listed on the agenda does anyone have any comments I do not have any speaker cards Mr no speaker cards okay then uh we will then move to the administrative calendar this is probably the world's Rec Record for fastest meeting administrative calendar and planning commissioner orientation I turn this over to Gerald right thank you Mr chair so Jennifer and I are going to tag team on this um so again my name is Geral Sano I'm the city clerk I've been with the city for about 17 years um and Jen I think just as long right so I'm going to start off with just some basic information about the city that you probably already know um so the city of desert hot springs is a charter city and what that means is so Charter cities operate under its own Charter um sort of like a constitution rather than General law um so to an extent um and I think Jen would agree with me on this to an extent Charter cities have the ability to govern independent ly on Municipal Affairs allowing allowing more local control and flexibility compared to General law cities that follow the state's legal framework um as you know the city is was incorporated in 1963 and we operate on a council manager form of government um and so what that means is the council manager form of government like most cities in California um is a structure used by many municipalities where the council sets policies and the appointed city manager oversees administrative operations uh the city council is elected body responsible for legislative functions such as enacting ordinances adopting budgets setting policy directions uh the mayor may be part of the council or the mayor is part of the council um typically serving a role either um as a

Figure Head city manager um is a as a appointed professional responsible for managing the day-to-day operations uh implementing Council policies and preparing the budget um I sort of like to compare to like a like a company so the city council is essentially like the board of directors and the city manager is like the CEO city council is comprised of five members so four members that are elected by District that serve a four-year uh term and then we also have a directly elected mayor that serves a four-year term um with a term limit of two terms um mayor protm or or otherwise known as vice mayor is rotated annually amongst the city council in December um and then as far as elections go so our general Municipal elections are held in November of even numbered years um and then in the January following um the uh election is when uh commissioner terms start over again and that's why you all are here here's a overview of our organizational structure um so like I described in the previous slide you have the citizens or the voters of the city that elect the mayor and city council um the two positions that the mayor and city council hire are the city manager and the City attorney and then under the city manager you have the deputy city manager and the assistant city manager and then the various departments and divisions that that fall under um each of those two so now I'm going to turn it over to Jennifer who will talk about things that we are mandated to do so here on the slide we have three things by the way um as a planning commissioner you will be getting a a huge uh 2hour lecture pretty much um in compliance with ab1234 on ethics um and

the political reform act the Ralph and bran act and uh other transparency laws so um those are required to be taken by the Planning Commission once every two years so the first thing is the political reform act and this is basically going to be your ethic laws um and conflicts of interest and two things about this number one you need to file your form 700s for if you haven't done so already I think they're due April 1 April 1 this year April 1st for uh um chairman andelle and commissioner Wagstaff and then for the three new ones they have to file an assuming office statement and it's due 30 days from today thank you so um your form 700s are a uh pretty much it's it's you could always ask Geral or myself if you have questions filling it out sometimes in my opinion um it's not exactly the easiest but basically uh you have to put uh various things on there in terms of what your you know what your primary source of income is whether or not you have uh uh any uh assets you're leasing homes in in the city of Desert Hot Springs you own homes in the city of desert hot springs and basically all of that is really to decide okay these are your these are your uh these are your income streams um and the reason why that's important is because the public needs to know pretty much your not all of your income but they need to know what you need um whether or not you have a conflict of interest in anything that you might be voting on and a conflict of interest really can stem from a multip a multitude of things number one would be a property interest and again you're going to be getting tons of information on this I'm just kind of throwing out out there but property interest um a kind of uh income that you get from a business Etc and the main thing that I always tell people when I do the trainings because I will do the

trainings on these is you always want to make sure that you have the city's interest in mine before yours right so you are here as a representative of the city you are here to represent the public and you always want to put your interests second or last aside from that of the Cities so if you know for example that uh a big development is going in right next door to your house you know the next property you would be preluded from voting or participating in the vote or influencing the vote because you would be assumed to have a conflict of interest on that development again there's going to be lots of information on conflicts of interest um some of it in my opinion is a little bit counter intuitive um but nevertheless you are required to to know the laws on the conflicts of interest and if you don't um if you have any questions whatsoever you could always come to me and I could do an analysis for you um the main thing is though as I said you always want to put uh the city's interests ahead of your own so if you even think like oh this could affect me or it could affect my property um come to me let me know and and we could do an analysis to whether or not you need to recuse from the vote um anything else really on conflicts form 700s form 700s they do need to be filled out if you have any questions definitely ask gerl or myself as I said they're somewhat convoluted in my opinion anything else on those um yeah the fppc also has an Advice Line that you can you know also reach out to and get a formal opinion on whether or not you have a conflict of interest on a matter um the advice that I like to give is you know like I'm not I'm not qualified like Jen to give advice on whether or not you have a conflict but what I always tell people is that it's

over to it's better to over disclose than to under disclose yeah absolutely um you don't want to find yourself Crossways with the uh fppc um so again you'll be going through a big fun training on that one next is the brown Act and the brown Act is pretty much the open meetings law obviously this is an open meeting we are doing the Public's business public has a right to know public has a right to be here public has a right to sit in the audience and ask questions Etc and there's various um various laws within the brand act it is a very long act and again its basic premise is meetings are open we do not do things behind closed doors except for the city council under very limited circumstances so for example uh today the agenda was posted at least 72 hours in advance of the meeting it gets posted in various places in the city including our website and if it's if something doesn't make the agenda if it's not posted on the agenda except for very few circumstances which are some exceptions we cannot talk about it we cannot discuss it we cannot uh make a decision on that so the our regular what are called regular meetings um the agenda needs to be posted 72 hours in advance and the public has a right to come comment discuss Etc um there are things called special meetings special meetings are require 24 hours notice advanced notice and uh we do have those every now and again we've had them even um here uh in the Planning Commission when we were going through all of the uh Zone code updates we had several uh special meetings we were pretty much needed to get that zoning code update uh done in a relatively short time period as a few council members may remember so we did have special meetings um and then there are another kind of meeting called the emergency meeting which requires one hour hour notice and we did have a few

of those actually during the pandemic uh they those hardly ever happen but they do happen every now and again and really truly in dire circumstances like a true emergency uh with the brown act the most important thing is is that because all meetings happen in public we got to be really really careful about not violating the brown act and not uh having a a concurrence of three or more uh council members outside of a noticed meeting and so uh I always encourage uh City Council Members planning Commissioners not to really talk about uh business outside of a regularly noticed meeting because it could run a foul of the brown act again you will be dive we will go head first into the brown act a lot more during the ethics trading and you've heard me talk about the ethics training do do you want to say anything else on the brand act did I get pretty much um can you talk about like serial meetings sure okay so a Serial meeting is something where it's kind of alluded to where let's say two people two Commissioners talk about something over lunch didn't really think anything of it oh yeah this this so and so is going to come in with this kind of development and then all of a sudden those two people talk to you know one of those persons talk to a third council member and all of a sudden you have this kind of meeting that nobody really knew about in a Serial like fashion unknowingly nobody meant to do it but all of a sudden now we could have a violation of the brown act because meetings really are to be open and in public so again I would just uh if if you have any questions about you know whether or not you could talk about anything um definitely let me know but on a general level you really don't want to talk about um things within your jurisdiction with I would advise even any members of the uh Planning Commission DEC decisions really are to

be made open and public and lastly you have state mandated ethics training yay so that is the 2hour ethics training um I generally do it sometimes uh we invite other members from other jurisdictions to come you can do it online um um the I think Cal cities might even have some uh training sessions as well the one that I do um I'm a little bit biased I kind of like it uh just because we do it kind of in a very kind of Clos U quote close quarter so you could have a lot of questions and answers I also provide a lot of examples because again sometimes in my opinion the ethics um can get a little convoluted but I always tell people as I said you want to put your um your you want to put the city's the city's Interest really before your own cuz you're really we're we're talking about you know public monies we're talking about public issues those are that's why you're here is to serve the public and so in my uh welcome emails to you all so I did provide a link to the fpc's um version of Ethics training um so you're welcome to do that on your own or um you know I'll get with Jen and we'll um coordinate a in-person ethics training that you can also wait for okay next we're just going to go over an overview of the Planning Commission um so again I'll turn it over to Jen so the Planning Commission um I'm biased I love this body uh so the Planning Commission uh does so much for the city the Planning Commission really hears uh uh most mostly discretionary matters um you will hear things like some and we talk a lot in acronyms lot in acronyms but a conditional use you will hear conditional use permits which

are um permits for a conditional use of property uh you will hear uh specific plans uh General plans um variances all these great fun um wonderful planning terms but basically you are going to get a chance to hear um all of the the the development applic not all of them but several development applications in the city that require discretionary review you are a discretionary body it's not like which is very different than going to the admin over the counter administrative permit let's say for a roof permit or something like that those things you won't hear those are uh ministerial in nature they go to staff but for some of the more I would say big and Travis you guys could correct me but some of the more big fun um uh developments you will hear those and you will make a decision on those um and there are several times sometimes the decision the final decision will rest with a Planning Commission like on a conditional use permit and sometimes the decision will be a recommendation to the city council and those happen in uh legislative matters such as specific plan amendments General plan amendments and ordinances so we also do a lot this this city um is very active with uh with the zoning code and our ordinances and what we put forth with uh the Planning Commission and again you would be a recommendation to the city council that is truly a living document um so that's pretty much the role it is um I will get into when we when we go into a little bit of the public hearing process I'll get in a little bit deeper into your role but that's the overall role of the Planning Commission uh do you have any questions for for us at this point a lot no okay um so I'll cover the next item which is attendance I know I mentioned it also in my welcome email but I'm going to go ahead and just read

um what the municipal code says as far as attendance so a commission member May request Advanced permission from the city clerk to be absent at one or more regular special meetings due to extenuating circumstances and or may request the city clerk to excuse an absence after the fact where such extenuating circumstances prevented the member from seeking Advanced permission to be absent uh if such permission or excuse is granted by the city clerk the absence shall not be counted towards uh limitations and those limitations are if a member fails to attend three consecutive regular meetings or 25% of the duly scheduled meetings of the commission within any calendar year his or her office um shall thereupon become vacant and uh be filled um uh as any other vacancy any questions on that okay um next item is meeting agendas and staff reports so as Jennifer mentioned um each meeting um has to have has to be accompanied with an agenda which are you know the items that the uh commission is going to be um acting on um and then each item uh there is is an Associated staff report and then also um like exhibits and attachments that consist of like studies and reports and Etc um we've had packets up to 25 2,500 Pages you are expected to read every single page I'm just kidding um but I would say you know with that the the most important is read the staff report because that'll summarize um uh the item that's you know be going to be before you um agenda packets are distributed on the Thursdays uh prior to the um Tuesday night uh Planning Commission meeting um we uh do electronic distribution um so I know haven't uh issued any iPads yet so we we we issue iPads um the ones that we have currently are very old um so I'm working with it on seeing if we have the

uh budget to purchase new ones but those will be coming soon any questions on meeting agenda staff reports and maybe Travis um and staff has anything to add you covered it well okay um public hearing process Jen so this is my favorite part so um the Planning Commission in my opinion is a very um it's a formal body and I would even venture to say sometimes it could be even more formal than city council and what I mean by that is the Planning Commission um hears hearings and decides on hearings and similar to that of a Judicial hearing hearing this is what's called a a quasi judicial body you sit as a judge that is you have five judges instead of one in a courtroom so that's what's here there's five judges and what what it looks like and there's a very formal process to it um is Staff will present a staff report the Planning Commission has factual questions of staff and then they the chair will open the public hearing you'll have testimony generally it's the applicant and then anybody in favor anybody uh opposed and then anybody neutral we actually ask for people in if there's nobody here there's nobody here and it just ask for everybody but um uh neutral as well we want to make sure that everybody has a chance to be heard um it is a due process issue so we're talking the Constitution both the United States and California Constitution it is a due process issue that everybody has a chance to be heard and it everybody has a chance to be heard unbiasedly and I'll go into that just in a bit then after everybody has a chance to be heard chair will close the public hearing come back to the Planning Commission for a final decision that's when the Planning

Commission or the city council if if they're a hearing body um will deliberate can make thoughts suggestions say how wonderful the project is how terrible the project is whatever you want all of that that is to be done at the close of the public hearing uh the reason why that is so important is the Planning Commission really has to be a neutral decision maker um you have to listen to all the evidence the testimony that is brought before you and you are basing your decision on the evidence that has uh come before you every now and again somebody will go and visit the site and say Hey you know I visited the site and you know it's interesting it looks like it's underp parked I'm going just make something up um well you could visit the site of course you could visit the site but when you come back and when you talk about your your findings and and and your deliberations you're going to want to disclose hey yes I visited the site so everybody has a chance to know um everybody has the the same almost testimony if you will not that you're providing testimony but basically uh you need to be a neutral arbitrator right you are making a a decision on a very very formal process um and so I encourage people to not comment say oh this is a great project prior to the opening of the public hearing because all of a sudden if everybody's like oh this is such a great project and we don't even have testimony yet it could discourage somebody who wanted to provide testimony and now all of a sudden they're like oh well decision's made I'm not guess I'm not going to say anything and so that is something that we don't want to happen we want it to be a very inclusive process but it's also a very formal process and so sometimes you

know the chair will say I will make go through the entire process even though there might not be too many people here in the audience um you are allowed of course to have opinions uh it's a hearing however um only you would know if you have a true bias against a project and um I go into biases uh along in the ethics training as well um but if you know that there's no way that you could be an open U an impartial decision maker let me know I've actually had that happen once in my career I've been doing it 22 years at one time it happened um where somebody said you know what I there's no way on on this planet that I would ever vote for this ever I can't no matter how much testimony I hear and I said you know what thanks for letting me know and he recused and that was the end of that and we did it with four people um but again they everybody has a right to an open an impartial hearing and that is why um I think the Planning Commission it's very foral and has just an incredible role in the city Jennifer did you want to say anything about ex party meetings like with a developer on the side or even with aity group I can't remember if we have um do we have an ordinance against I can't remember so what what um what Travis is talking about is every now and again you will get and again this is where I get into a lot more on the ethics trading a developer will get very excited and want to talk with you um about his or her project uh outside of the meeting um I'd have to double check our code as to whether or not we have a Prohibition some cities do have a Prohibition I just can't remember off the top of my head I would have to look so I will look at that um assuming no Pro you could talk to them I caution planning Commissioners to talk to uh a developer outside of a

meeting and then you would need to disclose that yes I spoke with the developer um he she and I discussed XYZ um and this way the entire body has the same information and if it is prohibited again I got to check the code on that then uh we would obviously discourage you from doing that um and I will get that prior to our next meeting so I make sure do you know off the top of your head if it's Inc if it's there's a Code section on it uh and not off top of my head with the HS but I know previous City strongly dis discouraged it I would discourage it uh just because again the public hearing process is a very formal process all right um so next I'll go over voting while you guys already experienced that earlier um as far as voting so we follow Ros Berg's Rules of Order um I did distribute um to you all um our city council and commission's meeting guidelines and procedures policy um and both commissions the Planning Commission and Public Safety commission as well as the city council are expected to adhere to it um as well as um a handout on rosenberg's Rules of Order and then a quick little cheat sheet on rosenberg's Rules of Order and then lastly um so meeting minutes um we've adopted action minutes here so the the minutes will ref reflect not necessarily what was said but what took place um but to complement the minutes we have streaming videos so right now we're streaming live on the internet through our YouTube channel and our website um and then those videos are also archived um for a playback as well um I think that about covers it and we're open to any questions we know it was kind of a lot of information at at at once but I'm we're here for any questions if you have or I could also I guess I'll and with you know like like you know City staff we're here to assist you um and we all

work as one team I have one question it's kind of a procedural ethics question when can planning Commissioners stand back there during public comments let's say we have to recuse ourselves because a developer is building a house next door to my house I would have to recuse myself but can I in public comments speak against it or for it so kind of a two-part question if you're if let's say you have a conflict any kind of conflict and the planning commissioner has to recuse uh normally what would happen is the planning commissioner would go outside the room and did not participate influence or or participate or influence in the decision however being a planning commissioner does not strip Away Your First Amendment rights okay so if a planning commissioner does want to speak against it for or for it or whatever you could get up off out of your seat and you could say that you are speaking as a member of the public and you're exercising your first amendment uh rights and you can speak uh for or against the project as a resident exercising your first amendment rights um technically you could do that as a matter of law I think I've seen that what once or twice maybe maybe maybe once or twice does not happen very often that's a really good question none of this strips anybody of their constitutional rights okay anything else hi everybody I have one comment real quick some of you guys may know me I'm Danny bordos I'm the assistant city manager muscle city engineer I just want to welcome you guys Welcome to our team so excited to start a new year new planning commissioner so one comment I just want to say is is we're here to help um sometimes the

agenda packets are going to be 4,000 pages long thank you very much Travis but doesn't mean you have to read 4,000 Pages look at the ones look at the staff reports pay pay attention to the main projects and please please please meet with staff uh staff's the one that has all the information of course we don't write the staff reports or we do write the staff report but we have Consultants that work on all the detail items so write down all the questions and please meet with staff we meet with staff right before this the Planning Commission meetings are able to answer all the questions so you're completely 100% uh understand the projects or whatever they're in front of you for that meeting U we've had in the past where some planning Commissioners did not want to and it does create a little bit like what was what can we help you so we're here to help that's my whole point of the story is we're here to help anything that you guys have any questions please reach out to our staff we have staff who are capable of answering All Those Questions beforehand but thank you and welcome again thank you okay um I just a personal comment for those of you who don't know Jennifer Mahi she's a gift from God first of all she saves us she protects us as Commissioners and she protects the city and saves the city and there's nothing you can't ask her that she won't give you an answer to quickly um so please use her Services she's wonderful for us and I'm glad she's back very glad thank you so are we ready to move on to public comments there no no public comments I assume okay um chair and Planning Commission member reports I don't imagine anybody has a member report okay okay community development director report and Gerald thought it was going to be a quick meeting but Jennifer and I are here so we um have a few couple of announcements to make um I was going to plug uh the planning Commissioners

Academy uh for 2025 it's going to be held in Santa Rosa California Wednesday March 5th through Friday March 7th Gerald informs me that the registration is sold out I guess uh but there is a wait list so we can still get you on the wait list so if you're interested in it C Gerald he handles all the U registration and uh if a spot opens up it's a great opportunity to learn about the discipline uh from expert but also your peers that's where you're going to get a lot of information as your peers that are doing the same same job so you guys are already on the wait list just uh the other announcement I wanted to make is the city has started to work with CAG on what they call the CV link Community connections projects uh as you know we do not have CV Link in the city yet there's been some preliminary planning and design on it uh and we do not have the linkage that connects Us North of it to all the CV link south of it 10 uh but cvec has started a process uh uh to get input from you all and the public uh through workshops online polls and they're even going to have the ability through a mapping interface for people to draw their own paths and linkages and connections so stay tuned that's coming up that'll be happening through the spring in this in the summer and then I wanted to um uh going to give you a little bit of heads up uh about uh what will be coming your way called our annual progress report that we submit to Housing and Community Development each year so uh soon as the new calendar year starts we submit a number of reports to both state and federal agencies saying here's what we built this past year uh here's how we did and so we've got these uh preliminary stats here now uh just

quickly run through them on single family issued about about where we were last year uh there was a a drop in the number of completed homes or as we say final homes uh in the business um it was kind of a slow summer but then things really picked up in the fall especially October November December uh so far we're starting out strong and we hope to hope we'll uh uh keep up uh multif family a little bit better there more units completed uh almost double there um res residential uh also about kind of the same as last year uh a bump in adus so we are seeing more accessory dwelling units uh in the city that have been uh issued um as well as completed and if you're not aware the city has uh what we call pre-approved Adu designs uh that the city invested in and so even you don't have the money to go out and hire an architect and all of that uh we do have the uh uh pre-approved Adu plans available for the public uh commercial is about the same um as far as new and and then um Rena Renovations uh Industrials about the same uh but I want to bring your attention to one number that really struck out uh to me and that's valuation so our permits are based on valuation the plan check part and the uh actual building permit part is based on the value value of the pro project and so this past year we had a big jump in valuation from 5.6 million in 2023 to 80.4 million anybody tell me why that is Amazon yeah so Amazon alone uh the valuation for just the building alone not the tenant improvements and all the

equipment all is at least 75 million uh so um scroll all the way down to the bottom bottom line is our total valuation jumped from 94.6 million to 179.50 million so uh quite a big jump uh for the city and then finally what I wanted to do is close with I should have done this at the beginning but also obviously welcome as well and introduce our planning staff here uh we have Patricia villagomez she is our principal planner and Patricia's been with us eight years eight years and then Ava Laura uh our new was U staff member and she's our assistant planner and she's been with us three months three months so you'll be seeing a lot of these ladies over the next two years uh as we uh bring a lot of cases forward I've talked to you some of most of you individually but you know we'll talk to everyone but um we have seen kind of a in the the entitlement projects come in phases right and waves and we saw a bit of a drop in applications in the fall but we're now seeing a lot of applications coming in so there will be some very exciting projects coming your way um new housing projects including affordable housing projects new commercial development and including New Logistics uh projects are all coming your way so we may have some light meetings and we may Council a couple meetings in the spring based on the timing but um there should be a very busy summer and and a very busy fall so anyway welcome and we look forward to working with you all

um no more public comments uh we can adjourn meeting is adjourn conat thanks bear with me go for