Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Good morning. Good morning, El Dorado County. Welcome, everybody, to the Board of Supervisors' regularly scheduled meeting of August 25th. It is 9 a.m., and I would like to call this meeting to order. May we please have the invocation from Pastor David Cook of the Cold Springs Church. Good morning. Welcome. Good morning. Good morning.

Thank you, Chair Lane, and thank you, Board of Supervisors, for the privilege of being able to open in prayer. I know that that, I don't take that for granted. So thank you very much. Let's pray together. Dear Heavenly Father, as students and teachers and parents and administrators head back to the schools and classrooms, I pray a special blessing and prayer protection over them. The students are our present and our future. They're our hope for a prosperous tomorrow. And I thank you for the teachers who dedicate their lives and careers to drawing out the greatest potential in the students that they teach. I thank you for the administrators who create the most positive environments for the students and teachers to thrive for the greatest impact. And I thank you for the parents who invest in the future blessing of their kids through their engagement with academics and sports that form them. And I pray that you would guard all their hearts and their minds and give them the encouragement to do well in the school year. I know the health of our county and its government either supports or undermines those in our county, and I pray for the important decisions that will be made to lead our county forward in ways that will create greater safety and economic vitality and opportunities for all of its citizens. Lord, I pray that you would give our leaders the courage and wisdom to make the decisions that are not easy or expedient, but are best for our present and our future. Through the heat of the critical conversations happening around the county today, this week, this month, this year, I pray that the best path forward would emerge. And I pray for those who serve us in our law enforcement and our first responder community. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would watch over them and protect them as they protect us. And thank you for the work that they do to guard our well-being. And I pray especially for those who protect us during the growing dangers of this fire season. I ask that you would protect us and spare us from the devastating fires we've experienced in the past and that we see happening in our neighboring areas. And I pray that you would be with the men and women of our military around the world as they stand firm to protect our freedoms. As they step into harm's way, be their shield and protection. Give them comfort and peace to their families that anxiously await their return. Help us to see how blessed we are today and help us to be the blessing someone around us needs. I pray these things in the name of Jesus. Amen. Thank you.

Thank you, Pastor. Supervisors of Parliament, will you please lead us in the pledge?

Sure. Everybody please stand and join me for the pledge. Begin. I pledge allegiance

Madam CAO, are there any changes to the agenda that was posted on August 19th? No, thank you, Madam Chair. Okay, thank you. Let's move on to approval of the consent calendar. Are there any items that my colleagues wish to comment on or pull for discussion? District 1, Supervisor Ferraro?

No changes, thank you.

OK district for supervisor Parlin and no. District 3 supervisor beer can no changes ma'am OK and district 2 supervisor turned.

Yeah, we just like to make a comment, but I would also like Karen Gardner to come up and speak on item 22 for clarification.

Good morning, Ms. Garner. Good morning, Karen Garner, Planning and Building Director. So item 22 is a resolution of intent to extend the Caldor ordinance. Currently, the expiration of that is December 31st of this year. And what that ordinance provides is some relief to the folks that were Caldor fire victims, including things like no fees for rebuilding, no county fees for rebuilding, ability to have a temporary RV. I just wanted to clarify that we are working with some of the folks that are remaining in RVs, as you know, with our Title 25 program, trying to get them out of those RVs. So this time extension helps us, gives us a little more time to do that. I want to be clear that the ordinance and it will we are not planning on making any changes it is intended for victims of the caldor fire that is something that they do need to show or we have to have records of so just want to make that clarification and that is true for both the ordinance and title 25 program okay thank you karen

Does that satisfy your concern? Okay, great. Thank you, Ms. Garner. All right, so we will now take public comment on all matters on the consent calendar. So public comment on closed session items numbers one through three and consent items number four through 47. Please identify, excuse me, 27, four through 27. Please identify which item number or numbers you will be addressing today. Ms. Dawson.

For public comment, each speaker will have three minutes to address the board. A timer will alert you when 30 seconds remain and again when your time has ended. We will begin with comments from individuals present in the boardroom, followed by those participating via Zoom. If you're joining via Zoom, please ensure you unmute yourself when you're called upon. If you're joining by phone, press star nine to raise your hand. If you're on Zoom, use the raise hand feature to indicate your interest in speaking. We ask that you voluntarily state your name for the record before beginning your comments. Good morning.

Sue Taylor, I had a question on number 20. You've got the Missouri flat areas, Masters, well, the M... uh ffp or ms whatever that is i thought we dissolved that and so i'm curious why we're still using it for funding did we not dissolve it i mean i felt like there's a lot of legal contracts that were tied to it i didn't understand dissolving in the first place and then if it we are using it how can be used for things that are outside the bounds of the mffp thank you thank you are there other members in the audience that would like to address the board at this time

Okay, seeing none, may we go online, please?

Now taking public comment from online participants. Now taking public comment from John's iPhone.

Good morning. I'm Dr. John Taylor, resident of the Greater Grizzly Flats community, and speaking to item 22, which Karen just brought up. I'm a member of South County Alliance, which is a nonprofit here that has been partnering with HomeAid Sacramento in the Title 25 effort to get people homed. And I'm sure you're all aware it's taken a long time to get the process going. We have a great start, but we have a long ways to go. So I'm in support of extending that ordinance. And thank you for your time.

Thank you. Now taking public comment from Linda Campbell.

Good morning, everyone. Linda Campbell, El Dorado Hills. First, just on item 17, I want to give a big thank you to the Youth Commission. I think it's great to see our youth getting involved and appreciate their interest and their volunteerism in coordinating that. On item 20, I actually was going to bring up the same thing as C. Taylor just did, why funds would be used from the Missouri Flat Area Master Circulation and Financing Plan. since I believe that was a specifically designated use case. And also I do know that there were discussions about dissolving it. So also curious why that's still open and potentially being used. And then finally, just on item 28, thank you for the proclamation. It's hard to believe it's been 25 years, but I appreciate your recognition of that. So thank you.

Thank you.

There's no additional public comment. Oh, I'm sorry. There's also public comment from London Litza.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Okay. This is on item 29, if you could include this comment for the public record. So my name is London Litza. I'm on the West Slope in El Dorado County. I'm a wife, a mom, and a rural property owner. My family chose to live rurally because we want to- Excuse me, Ms. Litza.

We are taking public comment on the items through item number 27. We'll be taking public comment next on the item that you're calling about.

Oh, sorry, I thought you said through 40 something, so.

I did, and then I corrected myself. So I'm sorry for throwing you off. It's okay. All right, thank you. Thank you.

There's no additional public comment.

Okay, let's bring this item back to the board for action. Ms. Dawson, can you read this item into the record?

Approve the consent calendar with the following change. Clarification was provided on item number 22.

Thank you. And Madam CAO, did you want to comment on any of the public comments?

Sure, just for clarification on item 20, the MCNFP was dissolved. However, the remaining funding was set aside in a special revenue fund to be used for the obligations through phase one of that project. And so this is an as needed contract. So I believe the department's just identifying any possible funding sources that might be used. And County Council can add if I missed anything.

I will just add, technically it was the community facilities district that was dissolved. The funding source remains and will remain until completion of those phase one obligations.

Thank you for that clarification. Any other comments or questions on consent? I would entertain a motion.

I'll move consent.

Second. Okay, there's a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? motion passes 5-0 all right thank you now we will move on to public comment on all other agenda items excluding the one public hearing that we have scheduled for this afternoon that's item number 30. so at this time we will take public comments on items number 28 29 and 31.

For public comment, each speaker will have three minutes to address the board. A timer will alert you when 30 seconds remain and again when your time has ended. We will begin with comments from individuals present in the boardroom, followed by those participating via Zoom. If you're joining via Zoom, please ensure you unmute yourself when called upon. If you're joining by phone, press star nine to raise your hand. If you're on Zoom, use the raise hand feature to indicate your interest in speaking. We ask that you voluntarily state your name for the record before beginning your comments.

Are there any members in the room? Well, good morning.

Good morning. Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board. Thank you for your time this morning. Appreciate it. David Bolster, Camino. And for a brief moment, I also serve on the County Ag Commission. So I do have a comment about Ag Commission. One Ag Commission issue related to the Ag lodging item. So a conversation with our planning director this morning. One item that from an Ag Commission perspective that we wanted to address is there was language on page four, of the planning director's presentation today, used the term recommendation, just clarification that the presentations from the Ag, the planning director were information only. So we had conversation and feedback, but the Ag commission has yet to make a formal recommendation. So we certainly hope we as the Ag Commission get the opportunity to hear the ag lodging item going forward, and I'm confident we do. That is our function. So we're looking forward to that conversation. So I also want to compliment our planning director and the your Economic Development Committee seed. We have some initiatives underway in addition to ag lodging, the so-called TBID, the Tourism Business Improvement District, that will be in addition to ag lodging, will be a tool for our farms and wineries in terms of maintaining economic viability going forward. So right now, I think we're all aware of the conditions in the wine industry. It's not too dramatic to say that it's a global issue. The wine industry has collapsed. We have, I think the latest forecast is about a 50% structural reduction in the scale of the wine industry. And that applies to all of our Sierra Foothill counties. There's probably a thousand acres of vineyard that have been removed in our neighboring Amador County so far. And so measures like ag lodging and tourism business improvement with the intent of creating a new visitors authority, those are gonna be important tools going forward in terms of maintaining the economic viability over ag lands. And as we know, the general plan, the focus of the general plan ag element, which the ag commission focuses on, of course, is preservation of our ag lands. And so our tools, ag lodging and the teabed and a new visitor's authority that drives visitation to our winery tasting rooms are going to be very critical going forward. So appreciate the time today and we look forward to a further conversation.

Thank you, Dave. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning, board.

Michael Rinaldi, Farm Bureau. My comments this morning are likely to be a bit rushed and slightly chaotic because that seems to be sort of the way we're approaching all of the lodging related issues. You know, the item that's before you, 29, is badly needed lodging infrastructure. And of course, infrastructure takes time to develop. I think that the survey that was done by your staff was well done. And I do appreciate that they clarified some of the methodology issues that I had. But, you know, after the item got posted and after I studied it through the weekend, provided you my written comments. You know, I stood over this all weekend. You know, there's a lot of new information that came out in this report on Thursday, Friday. I mean, the GIS data is new, the options that are proposed are new, the participation assumptions are new, and the scale of what is being proposed is new. And none of this information was made available prior to the planning of the Agricultural Commission. And so I don't feel I can support the item as it's presented to you today. You know, one of our ag commissioners asked a very important question that the staff report doesn't address at all. And that is, what's the relationship between our general plan and what is being proposed? And I'm here to remind you that our general plan already recognizes camping, lodging and and compatible visitor serving uses. It's in the 8.2, .4, .2, 3, 4, and 5. So, you know, citing the foundational items in our general plan I think is quite critical to your decision on this stuff. You know, this is not about farmers making a few extra dollars. This is about maintaining the viability of our agricultural land. And that's actually what the general plan addresses. You know, our zoning ordinance already provides for agricultural lodging, guest ranches, and these kinds of uses. And of course, the state has provided a framework through AB 518-ish. So we shouldn't approach this as if we're creating some sort of new land use initiative. This already exists in our general plan, and we should be closer to implementation. But with the new information, I really am asking you to send this back to your Ag Commission and ask them, direct them to provide you written and formal recommendations based upon not just what we know before in the survey, but the information that was provided in this report.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. I'm always echoing Mike. Good morning, supervisors. I'll try not to repeat all of that. My name is Lexi Boger, District 3. I'm a winery operator and a former planning commissioner. We do not need to reinvent the wheel today. We just need to put some air in the one that we've already got. Agricultural lodging, it exists, as Mike just said, and it's enshrined in our general plan zoning ordinance decades ago on our farms, our ranches, and our family forest operations. And the original ag lodging motion in 2024 had a simple purpose. It was to have staff clean up definitions and work with the ag community to make them workable for 2026 and make sure that the VHR ordinance changes didn't inadvertently shut down farm stays. The point was to make this right better for agriculture and not harder to use. So it bears repeating, you are not creating ag lodging today. It is already on the books. And taking away rights that are already in the general plan is a serious thing. Ag lives in a big group of zones. Ag, rural, and natural resources includes LAPA, grazing, rural lands, and forest and timberlands. These are our prime soils, our timber and forest lands, and our grazing lands, and every one of these zones already allows ag lodging in some form or another, either permitted or with a minor use permit or an admin permit. So choosing today which one to narrow down to actually could take rights away from some that are already there, particularly grazing. Second, what's missing is not the right. It's modern descriptions of what form that lodging should take. A dude ranch is in the books. Not sure what that is, but I think that cowboys invented camping. So maybe, you know, low impact camping could could get squeezed in there. The ag community asks three things, build on the existing policy we have used and earned over the long history of supporting this county's economy, craft the definitions, lodging scope and development parameters in partnership with landowners and keep the original spirit of the general plan. Make this right easier for farms, forests and ranches to use not harder. These have been the hardest 10 years for agriculture through climate change and market challenges. And through them, it has felt like the county has turned its regulatory sights on us. So to you, we ask, please change this tide. The county needs our revenue and our success just as much as we do. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Good morning again. Good morning, Sue Taylor. The process for ag lodging design standards hosted lodging VHRs have been discussed in silos without much public involvement, which in the long run will cause a backlash when these staff-driven policies are put in place. The meetings with the Ag Commission regarding ag logging were informational only in which the County Council instructed the commissioners that they cannot make formal recommendations. So it's odd that they put them on your package today. The outcome of this exercise will be as bad as the input that went into it and no one being happy with the result, not the farmers or the neighbors. Moving forward without the correct vetting will be creating a larger degree of constant conflicts between neighbors than the county is already dealing with and more people will start pushing back on ag industry and their ability to even exist i've sent you this email like at midnight so um i put because you've listed all the type of housing within this presentation that we don't get to hear until later i put in there what you should and shouldn't allow and why but i'm going to jump this should only be about ag lodging and that's the problem you're lumping everything and so nothing gets done So I would separate this item that it's just ag lodging and it should be done with administrative approval with very strict standards. So for that, what you never do is put down the standards. They always say, let's have strict standards. Well, so I wrote down some strict standards and we've said these like over and over for the last 20 years. So what I ask is you take these standards that I put together and They're very simple. And you take it back to the Ag Commission, let them vet it, let the public, let these guys come and have a discussion and let them approve these, move it to the Planning Commissioner. This is how it's actually done, how we used to do it and how other organizations do it instead of doing it in silos and making everybody angry. So Do this. Take these. Take it to the Ag Commission. Take it to the Planning Commission and bring it back here and approve it so that these guys can move forward. I would take out camping because that's a whole different animal. I think there could be appropriate places for camping, but the places where it's happened in Camino have been... fought by the neighbors. So I think it needs to be taken out so it doesn't slow down the regular ag logging. And then we talk about where would camping be appropriate. This willy-nilly, let's approve it on every project or property that is zoned XYZ, and you plant it in an area that's, it ends up being somewhere where it's going to be completely conflicting with that community. So I think that needs a different discussion that should be brought back to the Ag Commission to start with because which farms are okay with camping that don't have neighbors that are going to be upset about campfires and noise and a whole different kind of activity. So those are my recommendations, and I've been a member of Apple Hill. I'm a building designer. I love my community, and you know me. I've been here a long time trying to get this stuff in place. Thanks. Thank you.

Good morning. Good morning, board.

Lauren Hernandez, Shingle Springs resident and also the co-founder of the El Dorado Economic Generator and Germination. We've been before you many times, so I know you're familiar with our work, but we believe that the best solutions come from those closest to the situation. And we've been very fortunate over the last year to be leading a community-driven planning initiative and working with strengthening our agriculture here in El Dorado County, as we've shared and as I'm sure you're familiar with, many of our ag lands are not currently in production. And the general plan of the county calls those our greatest economic asset. And so one thing we've really appreciated is meeting communities where they're at. And we've really seen that our agriculture community is a very diverse community. And so there are... A range of crops. There's a range of regions. I know, you know, top of mind when we think of El Dorado County agriculture, Apple Hill certainly comes to mind and they've done incredible, you know, and are thriving quite well there. And maybe even a lot, maybe sometimes too much visitors and there's challenges that come with that. But we think challenges are opportunities to leverage. And so there's models there with their infrastructure and policy that was created to support them. I think that is really important and I want to, I think, use caution and as it's been brought forward today of representing of feedback from a certain community. So today the Ag Commission and whether that was representative of official direction from them, but also any kind of outreach that is presented maybe forward that would say the agriculture community said this. And I think definitions matter. And so, for example, across our county, there are seven agriculture districts. And so I think that any recommendation that comes forward saying the agriculture community has a certain perspective that it is defined and that there should be feedback from each and every one of those districts. agriculture districts as well as crops we know certainly our top crops are apples and grapes and timber and cattle so each and every one of those should be included but again we want to make sure that we're not just having a few folks who have a specific perspective that it's really the full breadth of this community including the neighbors who are part of that and hopefully will be supporting our farms so let's just make sure that we're all having the same conversation and that we're bringing those who are closest to the situation to help bring forward the best solution. So thank you.

Thank you. Other members in the room, please come forward. Good morning.

Good morning, and thank you for hearing me. I am a landowner in District 2. I want to thank you for taking the time to consider whether we should move forward with this. The community has already spoken. The public survey demonstrates the majority of the respondents support moving forward with this ordinance. And I believe that that should carry significant weight kind of echoing what she said. And this is an opportunity to listen to your constituents and act on a practical, responsible solution that has potential to benefit rural landowners, agricultural operations, small businesses, and of course the tourism economy. That's a huge part of what we do here. I want to circle back to something that resonated during the previous discussion. This is low-hanging fruit. We're not asking the county to create an entirely new industry from scratch. We are asking you to create a thoughtful, reasonable pathway for responsible use of private agriculture on rural land that aligns with the state's approach to low-impact camping. With appropriate standards, limits, and oversight, this can be an opportunity to generate economic activity while maintaining the character and integrity of our rural communities. For many of us, however, this is about much more than tourism. It's about our livelihoods and our ability to remain in El Dorado County. The ability to responsibly generate supplemental income from our land can make the difference between continuing to invest in a property and being forced to reconsider whether we can afford to even remain here. I sincerely hope the board recognizes that decisions made today can have a very real consequence for family and landowners immediately, you know. I also hope you will consider the larger picture. Visitors who stay on private agriculture and rural properties spend money throughout the community. Restaurants, wineries, breweries, farm shops, gas stations, outdoor recreation businesses, They become familiar with our forests, farms, rivers, trails, wildlife, and communities. When people are given the opportunity to experience these places responsibly, they often leave with a greater appreciation for why they are worth protecting. We believe private landowners can be partners in that stewardship. Some of the most beautiful places in El Dorado County are privately owned. Allowing carefully managed low impact access gives people an opportunity to experience those landscapes while creating an economic incentive for landowners to maintain and preserve them. We want to keep them protected so that we can continue checking in on them. I'm not asking the board to approve a blank check. I'm asking you to direct staff to write the ordinance, study the details, establish reasonable safeguards, and bring a thoughtful framework back to the community for consideration. I'd be proud to participate in the process and share information, research, and real-world perspectives. Ultimately, we want to stay here. We want to invest here. We want to build our future here. But we also need leadership that recognizes the economic realities facing the people who live and work on this land. If El Dorado County demonstrates that it's willing to embrace responsible innovation and opportunities for its rural communities, that gives people like us another reason to remain and continue investing here. Please listen to the constituents, choose the low-hanging fruit, and direct staff to move forward with this agricultural lodging and low-impact camping ordinance. Thank you for your service to El Dorado County and considering the future of the people who call it home.

Thank you. Are there members in the room that would like to address the board? Good morning. Good morning.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Axel. I live in Somerset. I'm here today because I believe that low-impact camping has the potential to be something genuinely good for El Dorado County. For our landowners, for our small business, for the people who come here, wanting to experience what makes this place so special. People aren't coming here looking for resorts or big developments. They're coming here because they want something real. They want to wake up under the trees, see the stars without the city lights, small towns, visit our hiking trails, and experience a slower rhythm of life. And that matters. Every person who stays on local property becomes someone who can eat at a local restaurant, buy a bottle of wine from a local vineyard, stop at a farm stand, visit a coffee shop, purchase something from a local maker, or discover a part of El Dorado County they may have never experienced otherwise. And this means that tourism dollars stay here, circulating through our small businesses and supporting the people who actually call this county our home. And it also creates opportunities for rural landowners. Owning and caring for land is expensive. Low impact camping offers the property owners a way to generate modest supplemental income without selling their land, subdividing it, or turning it into a large scale development. And in many ways, allowing people to responsibly earn income from their land that can actually help preserve the rural character and what we're trying to protect. And I think the distinction is incredibly important. We can support tourism without overdeveloping our communities. We can create economic opportunity without losing the character of the foothills. We can invite people to this beautiful place while still protecting the land and makes it worth visiting in the first place. Of course, there should be thoughtful standards around fire safety, sanitation, environmental protection, noise and respect for neighborhood properties, but responsible operators want those things too. Those regulations should reflect the actual scale and the impact of what's happening. A landowner hosting a few tents on acres of rural property is fundamentally different from operating a hotel or large commercial campgrounds, and our code should recognize that difference. El Dorado County is something people are actively searching for. Open space, agriculture, small towns, wild places, incredible local businesses, and access to nature. Low impact camping gives us an opportunity to share those things intentionally while creating another economic pathway for people to live here. This isn't about changing El Dorado County into something else. It's about recognizing the value of what's already here. It's about supporting landowners, strengthening our rural economy, bringing visitors into our local business, and giving people a reason to fall in love with this county while keeping the footprint small. I hope you will vote today to create a reasonable pathway for low-impact camping within the lodging facility codes. I believe that we can protect this land and share it. We can preserve what makes Eldorado County special and allow it to support the people who steward it. Those things don't have to be in opposition. Done thoughtfully, they can strengthen one another. Thank you.

Thank you. Other members in the room that would like to come forward? Okay, seeing none, let's go online.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Good morning.

I'm sorry, I walked in. I thought we were starting at 930 on this topic. But this is the ag lodging, right?

We're taking the public comment on it now, though. Okay, perfect. Okay. Okay.

So I'm Pam Harris with Apple Hill Growers and owner of Harris family farm in Pollock Pines. And I just want to go on record to say that I agree. with Mike Rinaldi's suggestions. And I also agree with the recommendation of the work group to limit the ag lodging options to the specific ag zoning that was indicated. And as Apple Hill Grower President, my job is to protect the interests of our members who are all legitimate farmers who are farming to support their families and offer a great product to the public. So a couple of things I just would urge the board and the crafters of the actual zoning community the zoning language is to make clear that the growing of crops is really the primary use of the ag land. And I noticed in the presentation, it was a footnote to the chart. I would hope that it would be a more than a footnote to the chart. And secondly, consider hard limits on the ag lodging. And I saw on the camping, they were recommending one campsite per acre. I think that's probably pretty conservative. You probably could do more than one campsite per acre. But in terms of the, if you have like a B&B or something like that, or rooms that you're renting, I think what we don't want is like a hotel. So I would consider hard limits for those kinds of guest houses or guest rooms because regardless of the permitting, whether it's a CUP, an MUP, whatever that process is, I think there should be a hard limit. And what we don't want as farmers is we don't want what we're facing right now with our events issues. is we feel like if people come in and they go to take everything to the limit, what that does is it puts our ranch marketing buy right activities at risk, which puts our farming efforts at risk as well. So I would urge hard limits on the ag lodging. Let's see. I wrote really small, so I'm having trouble here reading it. Okay, so the last thing I just want to say is that clearly the county is lacking lodging for our visitors. We get millions of visitors a year, and we do not have adequate lodging. So I would just urge the board to look for ways to streamline the process to get legitimate, whether it's hotels, motels, in these areas where we have high visitation, Camino, Placerville, So that instead of looking to capture all the costs up front, let's look to the future and say we do have a steady revenue stream if we can get these lodging establishments in because we get the TOT over the long term.

So thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Anyone else in the room before we go online? Okay, seeing none, may we go online, please, Ms. Dawson?

Now taking public comment from online participants. Now taking a public comment from call on user one.

My name is Gord Orbison, and I'm not a big fan of agritourism. First, I want to say thank you to George Sternbu for supporting agriculture. and supporting my values. I met him once. He's a good man. Anyway, on the agritourism, look who you're going to be bringing up to El Dorado County and the North State in general. You're going to be bringing a bunch of liberal-ass trainees from San Francisco. We're going to beat our women in sports, creep our women in bathrooms. and rape our women in county jail. This needs to stop. Agritourism brings these stupid hippies and brings a bunch of minorities who are going to start criming around the neighborhood, including these niggers and white bags. They have to stop this ordinance. God bless America. God bless Israel, even though Kikes did 9-11. And God bless our eternal president, Donald Trump.

Now taking public comment from Mr. Giles.

Hi there, good morning. My name is Joe Giles. I'm a Somerset resident and I wanted to, Back up what the recommendation by Michael Rinaldi was as far as sending this back to the board, the Ag Board to, or the Ag Commission, I should say, for getting some specific recommendations from them. My concern is with the permitting process. When we looked at the permitting process before the conditional use permit was extremely onerous and costly. And I would ask that the board consider a less onerous and a less costly permit process.

Wait a minute you guys.

I'm sorry. Go ahead. And my other concern is that Lumping in the low-impact camping with the ag land stuff, my understanding is from what was put out, which I only received this last weekend and haven't had a whole lot of time to review it, was the requirement of five acres of ag land be used for even for RL zoned properties. And that just doesn't work for all properties because not all properties have even five acres of usable ag land that can be used for low impact camping sites, which in the past has been just a flat piece of ground where somebody can pitch up a tent under a tree and enjoy the river or enjoy the scenery, the sunsets or whatever. And so my concern is that we're taking something that is already functional and we're making it much more difficult and much more complicated than it actually needs to be. I would like to see the board look into this, have staff look into this, get recommendations, talk to actual former and current hip camp hosts, find out what works, what doesn't work. I feel like the board is kind of approaching this blind when there's plenty of information already out there in this county with successful hosts that have been doing this for a number of years and have a lot to offer as far as information. I know there's a lot of fear and a lot of trepidation that goes into making these new changes, but there's plenty of good information out there to be had and it would be helpful if the staff would reach out to some of these hosts and to hip camp themselves. I was looking at the hip camp, um, public comment and the recommendations for fire safety for regulations that work in other counties. I think there's a lot of really good information there that the county should be considering before taking any action on this issue. Thank you. Thank you.

Now taking public comment from Linda Campbell.

Linda Campbell Eldorado Hills on item 29 ag lodging. I'm really thankful for the people that have gotten up to speak, particularly Mike Rinaldi. Because I also thought this was very different from what had been reviewed in the Ag Commission. It's almost like we put the naming of agriculture on this as maybe some kind of leverage. But in reality, it's not ag only. As soon as you start including RL and potentially LA lands, that doesn't mean that ag is the primary use. And so if ag is not the primary use, then it's not really a benefit for agriculture businesses in our county so um i would definitely agree that it should be referenced to the general plan and everything that's already existingly allowed if in fact this is supposed to be focusing on our ag producers um and then also i didn't see any alignment with ranch marketing was brought up that's kind of regular chaos and i think people have tried to leverage that in similar ways where they're not really ag producers, but they want to try to act like they are so that they can do events and stuff like that. So my recommendation is to have this go back to the Ag Commission in full and have them determine if there's a clear recommendation that they can make for their benefit and focus. So the other item I had actually was item 31 on the affordable housing Tim offset piece. There's the revision to the policy itself, but in the text of the item, there's a bullet point in there suggesting that the CAO and or the planning director should only have approval for that in order to streamline. So my general thought on that is I think that it should stay that it still goes to the Board of Supervisors, even if it's on consent, the public has visibility to it. So hopefully that's not a change that's made and that it stays as board approved as a process. So thank you.

Thank you.

Not taking public comment from Laurel.

and repeat information you've already heard at El Dorado County, Laurel-Bruntham, El Dorado County Chamber. We would like to go on record in support of Mike Grinnelli, Lexi Boger, and Lauren Hernandez comments in the hope that this will be developed in the leniency and favor of our ag community. Thank you. Thank you.

Not taking public comment from Kim Beal.

Good morning, Kimberly Beal, El Dorado County Association of Realtors. Our Association of Realtors supports our agricultural businesses and the proposed new sources of income through agricultural large lodging, including low impact camping. It is in the best interest of the county that our ag businesses thrive as they provide revenues to the county. Some of our ag businesses are having a difficult time staying in business and this additional source of income may just keep them profitable. Changing topic a little bit, in 2004, our general plan established a right to farm requirement and shortly thereafter, a right to farm ordinance was adopted, which required a real estate transfer disclosure statement and that the county created. This disclosure document is still in use today. In 2024, The ranch marketing ordinance and wineries ordinance were updated and states the real estate transfer disclosure statement be updated to incorporate these two other ordinances. At the same time, the county adopted the agricultural marketing disclosures ordinance as a means to pull all of this together. However, the disclosure has not yet been updated and we encourage the county to do so right away. Furthermore, should any new ag ordinance be created, it too should be included into the county's agricultural disclosure. But please do not wait to update the current one with the ranch and wineries ordinance. And I also ask that the county contact me when they are ready to begin updating the disclosure document as we have additional input for the disclosure. Thank you.

Thank you.

Now taking public comment from London Litsa.

Welcome back. Hello again. This is for item 29. As you just heard, my name is London Litza. I'm a wife, a mom, a property owner. My family chose to live here rurally because we wanted room to raise our animals, grow food, build a simple life on our own property. I echo a lot of the sentiments of Lexi, Lauren, the gentleman in the blue shirt, Axel. I support giving rural and agricultural property owners more opportunities, including agricultural lodging, people-impact camping. I just want to make sure that the county doesn't unintentionally change the rights of people that are already under another, if this makes sense. So we already have, we've seen how the rules involving HHRs, ADUs, multiple primary houses that predate the building department. VHRs, zoning, and other county requirements can overlap in ways that ordinary property owners never expected. A person can follow the rules in good faith, invest money, build their life around these, and then discover that later another ordinance change has created a new problem for them. So the county's revised presentation itself recognizes agricultural lodging and VHRs as different lodging categories. I just hope that the board keeps those lines clear as it moves forward and makes sure that the new ag lodging rules don't accidentally restrict other existing lawful uses for others. For families like mine, rural living is not a loophole or a business strategy. It's the way we deliberately chose to live our life and why we bought our property. We bought it because we want freedom to raise our kids, like I said, homestead, use our land responsibly like a lot of these landowners and create something. I hope that every decision the board makes in this area starts with simple principle. Make it easier for good people to do things with their property, not harder. Protect safety and neighborhoods where there are real impacts, but do not create overly complicated rules that punish responsible families who are just trying to live, work, survive, and raise their kids here. Do not keep restricting rights. Thank you for considering that perspective. And I did just want to say I sent an email last week to the clerk of the board, and I wanted to make sure that that was received by all of the members of the board, not just Lori Parlin. I wanted to make sure that the ad hoc committee got it, like Ferraro, Supervisor Ferraro, sorry, Supervisor Turnbull, and especially Supervisor Vierkamp, whose district that I am in. And thank you so much.

Thank you.

Now taking public comment from Greg Hanson.

Good morning, supervisors. I would like to be very honest. These ordinances, bad policies, hiccups, they're all killing this county with bad, good intentions, bad effects. I just got off the phone with a local operator, another person who was struggling, who was trying to do the right things for the county, who was trying to work with the county, work with the permits, work with the TOT, and he's just getting roadblocks. Many of these people don't get responses back from the county. They don't hear back from Karen Garner. Kevin Bailey has told me personally he doesn't do email. And so you have folks who are trying to follow the rules, folks who are trying to make a living, folks who are trying to make this county thrive, and they're getting the door shut on them. Lori has called this chaos, and she's right, but it's chaos from the county. You hear from operators all the time who are trying to do the right things, and the rules change, just like the HHR-VHR violation hiccups. For those of us who actually live rurally, who live on large parcels of land, who raise animals, work the land, and are trying to build something out of nothing, trying to build something productive, this constant hiding behind the phrase keep it rural has got to stop. We are actually the rural ones, and we are telling you how we want to live. Quit listening to the complainers. Quit restricting the property rights of people who live here. Rural does not mean freezing property in place just because you like something a certain way or you don't like something and you want to regulate it out of existence. Wineries are going out of business. Bed and breakfast are going out of business. And so I ask you, what is your plan to keep the revenue and the tax dollars coming in? You're literally chasing away businesses. I run a software consulting firm out of the Bay Area, and I lived a very busy life. working in marketing, venture capital. And my wife and I decided personally, we wanted to slow down, come back to a place where I came as a child and live a rural life. And ironically, I'm more busy than ever chasing these crazy fraudulent fines that you're putting on people. the Fourth Amendment violations, the constant just nonsense that comes out of the Board of Supervisors. It's insane. This county prides itself in being red or being conservative and being rural, but it is by far the most dysfunctional place I've ever lived. And I'm talking about I've lived in Phoenix, Chicago, San Jose. You say you're protecting rural character, but you're adopting policies that are actually destroying it. You say that you want agriculture destroyed. but you're putting in place policies that chase businesses out. You want tourism, small businesses, and rural families, but this is not a place where young families can succeed. There aren't good schools. There aren't good jobs. It's hard and expensive to live on land. You cannot regulate your way into a thriving rural economy. Simplify the rules, create certainty, respect property rights, stop moving the goalposts, and stop destroying the very rural character that you claim you're trying to protect. Thank you.

Thank you.

There is no additional public comment.

okay well thank you for all the folks that took time out of your day to come and address the board on the topics that we're going to take up today let's go ahead and move to our time certain department matter item number 29 miss dawson

Item number 29 comes from Planning and Building Department recommending the board receive and file an informational presentation on agricultural lodging and other agritourism activities. Two, direct Long Range Planning Unit to pursue amendments to the zoning ordinance. And three, direct the Planning and Building Department to work with the Department of Agriculture to form and staff a program to support the proposed zoning ordinance amendments. Written public comments received by 4 p.m. on the day prior to today's meeting were distributed to all board members and included with this agenda item.

Thank you. I'd like to welcome our planning and building department and specifically our director and our long range planning manager. Welcome.

Thank you. Good morning. So I wanna start off by saying, first of all, thank you to everybody who provided some input on this item, but by and large, I think we're actually on the same page with the majority of the comments. And that being particularly that, this is not a quick, short process. This is something where we're taking input, we're coming back to the board, getting some feedback. We're going to the Ag Commission, getting feedback. We'll be going back out to the community, getting additional feedback. I kind of think of this as a funnel. We initially got a lot of input and we refined those ideas and we've refined those comments. We've been taking that out and getting additional feedback and we'll keep refining, keep refining. So right now I look at this as we're kind of in the middle of the process. We still have a lot of outreach and input to gather from the very communities that were mentioned by our speakers today. And we will be coming back to the Ag Commission when we further refine the program here. And then, of course, returning to the board with eventually a resolution of intent and then the actual resolution at some point in the future. Another comment I want to make is, as was mentioned, we have ag lodging on the books. It is in our zoning code. It has been there for a while. very, very few people have taken advantage of it. And the reason why is because even though it shows in our zoning code yes, you can do this and here's the permit type you need. That's all it says. There is no program behind it. There are no standards, as was mentioned, behind it. And I think that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to get that input to understand what those standards should be and then put together a program so it does make it easier and easier clear for people. Right now it's not clear. All you see is, hey, I need a administrative permit or I need a conditional use permit, but there's no other information in our zoning code that says exactly what you need to do to be successful in that process. So that's what we're trying to do here is put that those steps in front of folks get feedback and eventually have a program that we can bring back and approve. So it's very clear of how you can be successful in doing ag lodging. So thank you for letting me share those thoughts. So if Kim, if you wouldn't mind bringing up the presentation. Thank you. So again, providing an update today on the ag lodging effort and specifically what we've learned so far and getting feedback from the board on the next steps. Before we begin, I wanted to emphasize again that ag lodging is already on the books, but we're trying to create a program behind it so that it is clear. Just give me some background of what we've talked about with this so far with the different groups. And I think Mr. Renali mentioned this, that this came up in 2017 where the board originally discussed expanding agritourism opportunities. And for whatever reason, there were some things that came out of that, but for ag lodging in particular, there weren't really any particular programs or changes that were made. So this came back to the board in 2024 and the board directed staff to work collaboratively with various ag groups and community. And based on that direction, staff conducted some stakeholder meetings and we looked at revenue options with the CA's office and budget ad hoc and presented some initial concepts to our economic development committee seed. In April 26 of this year, staff presented an update to the board and the board requested a follow-up presentation to provide some additional information and data. And so since that time, we've been doing that data gathering, doing that outreach and have that update for the board here today. So next slide, as was also mentioned in the comments, just wanna talk about different lodging options. And there certainly is some overlap between things like ag lodging, ADUs, VHRs. They are distinct and different in other ways. And we didn't have time with this presentation, but staff is talking a lot about How do we present that information anytime we're talking about any of those topics to try and clarify where there is overlap and where there is not? So this is just really intended to show we are keeping that in mind. We understand that there are different lodging options and permanent housing options such as guest housing and ADUs are considered permanent housing options. So we will work on that as part of our outreach efforts with AgLodging and with these other areas. We will try and provide additional information to clarify where there's overlap and where there are differences. Okay, next slide. So again, board direction, we focused on two major areas. So providing a summary of our outreach efforts. And one of the things that we were given direction on was not only to those that could benefit from this program, but those that might not take advantage of the program, but could be living next door to the ag lodging efforts and make sure we got feedback from that group as well. We're also providing some data and financial analysis, including some maps of potentially impacted parcels or zones as we refine exactly who might be able to take advantage of this program, what types of parcels, and then the county's projected implementation and maintenance costs, our anticipated revenue and revenue impacts for those operating ag lodging. Next slide. So to fulfill the outreach request specifically from last board direction, we did meet with the Ag Commission on June 1st, and on June 10th, we released an online public survey. On July 8th, we presented preliminary results of that survey to the Ag Commission, and the Commission did have some feedback, and I want to echo what Dave Bolts said earlier. In the staff report, in the presentation, we used the word recommendations. It was not formal recommendations. He's exactly right. It was feedback we received, not only from the Ag Commission, but from members of the audience that were in attendance at that Ag Commission meeting. I totally agree that at the point we go back, likely once we have a more refined program and ordinance, we'll go back to the Ag Commission. And at that point in time, we'll seek formal recommendations. But what we're talking about today is just feedback from individual commissioners on the Ag Commission. So some of the things we heard was to make sure we're keeping in mind the seasonal employee lodging and develop safeguards to protect that ag employee lodging. Also to consider returning to a model that's been used in the past that is a working group model. with representation from the ag industries, from perhaps the planning commission and the board and staff and other interests in the matter to provide a little more focused input as we continue to refine this program. So we also had some feedback, again, from members of the public that were in attendance at the Ag Commission, and that included things such as researching the compatibility of low-impact camping with the Williamson Act, consider allowing temporary lodging in zoning areas outside of some of our Ag Zones, and then providing methodology for the survey, and I think Mike Rinelli talked about that a little bit, and allowing temporary lodging on perhaps some smaller parcels than what we had talked about, such as going down to 10 acres. I think the one thing, and this was also mentioned as well, the one thing that was pretty clear, everybody said ag first. Whatever we do, it needs to be in support of ag activities, that that needs to continue to be the primary use on these parcels. All right, next slide. So the survey that we did, I'll talk a little more specifics about the survey. It was circulated for about a month from mid-June to mid-July. We received 677 total responses, which is actually a very good number to receive. I think our PIO said that was about the second most survey responses we've received for county surveys. But I'm not going to claim that it was statistically valid or that, you know, we used some pro-survey company to put it together. We were simply trying to get feedback and put some questions out there that people could respond to so that, again, we can continue to get that feedback and refine the program. So with that in mind, the survey produced several consistent themes. So respondents emphasized that agriculture should remain the primary use on the property, that landowners should reside on site, and that strict fire and noise regulations are essential. Many respondents also highlighted the importance of neighbor notification, and there was actually a lot of support for low impact camping. So the chart on this slide reflects the distribution of responses related to expanding temporary lodging on ag lands. So 44% of the comments provided support for expanding permissibility of ag lodging activities on ag land, while 26% of the comments were strongly against it and the remaining were either neutral or express concerns, but overall we're still open to the idea. All right, next slide, continuing on survey highlights. So more than 90% of the survey participants live within El Dorado County. And about a quarter of those are agricultural landowners or lease agricultural land. About half rated their interest in ag lodging at a four or five. indicating a high level of interest. And Lewin Pack Camping was the highest rated lodging use type. Also the survey highlighted the public's strongest topics of concern. Again, fire, traffic, excessive hosting, and most really supported the regulations and putting regulations in place to make sure We have the fire safety, quiet hours, things like that. The full survey is an attachment to this staff report. If anybody wants to look at individual questions and how folks responded. All right, moving on to the next slide, talk about projected annual cost. And this one is a little bit tricky because we don't know what we don't know. And so we're making what I'll call educated guesses on some of this. We based it on one of the options that we're going to talk about in a little bit here. Option A was sort of the most conservative approach that we are using. suggesting as one of the options and taking about 10% of the properties that would actually qualify under option A, which is about 40 properties. So our assumptions for projected costs are based on, let's say 10%, 40 properties of option A chose to participate and provide ag lodging. And then from there, we would make some other assumptions about how many room nights they sell and costs and so forth. We are also looking at annual program costs that are in total estimated at approximately $26,000. And that's just really, you know, a lot of it is staff time, some environmental work that needs to go into this. And that's really kind of a one-time cost. We would collect potentially permit fee revenue. So if they have to get an administrative permit or conditional use permit or whatever level of permit they have to get, there would be some fees paid associated with that to offset the cost of processing those permit fees, about $6,000. So again, just wanted to emphasize that in drafting whatever ordinance we come up with, we will likely need to do some environmental work. We're anticipating it may be at the level of a CEQA addendum. That costs approximately $15,000 to $25,000 to take care of that. But again, that is a one-time cost. All right, moving on to the next slide with projected annual revenue. So again, we assumed that there would be at least 40 properties participating in this program. And if they were to offer three rental units on each of those 40 properties at $200 per room and renting them at least 52 nights out of a year, That's what we based our projections on. We felt that was fairly conservative. Certainly the room nights could go for more. They could rent them out more often than that. But just to give some idea of what we project in terms of revenue. So using those numbers, it would generate $1.2 million annually back to the folks that are running these ag lodging facilities. And out of that, about 124, almost 125,000 would be generated in, uh, transient occupancy tax or tot back to the county and we use the term in here discretionary dtot all we really mean by that is it's it's it's goes into the county's general fund it is not earmarked for any particular use so about 125,000 in TOT would be generated to the County. And so therefore we anticipate it would cover annual operational expenses. All right, and the next slide. So to understand this kind of fiscal baseline we put together, we reviewed our current TOT paying parcels that fall into these Ag Zone parcels. And currently there's about 18 properties that meet the acreage thresholds that we're gonna talk about and that are already paying TOT. So there's already folks out there operating something it could be a vhr it could be ag lodging there's on grazing land you could currently do ag lodging by right so that's another possibility as was discussed when we talked about vhrs last week we know that there are folks out there that may not be legally set up to to have a permit to do a VHR or ag lodging, but are still collecting TOT and remitting that to the county. So that 18 number could include some of those as well. All right, with that, I'm gonna now turn it over to Thea to talk about the analysis that we did on various options and a little bit about low impact camping and recommendations.

Thank you. Staff also performed a GIS analysis to understand the potential beneficiaries, which in this case is the ag community, non-beneficiaries, which are essentially the neighbors to those ag lands, and impacted areas under different zoning and acreage thresholds. We evaluated four possible options ranging from a more limited approach to a broader, more impactful one. The next several slides detail these options with maps. So first, option A includes Ag Zone properties that are 20 acres or more. So this option A is what we based our financial assumptions on. So all those costs and all those revenues that you just saw, those slides, that is based on option A. Staff believes option A is a viable approach to move forward with as it prioritizes, again, Ag first. Next slide. Option B includes ag zones and rural lands equal to or greater than 20 acres. As you can see, this will add approximately 20, sorry, 2,000 parcels, both beneficiary and non-beneficiary. Staff is not recommending to include rural lands currently. We're going to start small with a pilot program. That's the concept for today. Next slide. Option C includes ag zones equal to or greater than 10 acres. This option is another possibility given that it only includes ag lands. However, it would include more beneficiary and non-beneficiary parcels with the lower possible acreage amount. So potentially more impactful. Next slide. Option D includes ag and rural zones equal to or greater than 10 acres. This would affect by far the most parcels as you can kind of, if you squint, you can see that it even impacts some parcels in Tahoe. Staff does not find this option to be appropriate given the number of impacted parcels, especially not to start. Next slide. So now I'm going to kind of shift gears a little bit into low impact camping. This slide summarizes the state requirements under AB 518 for low impact camping. And based on the outreach, as Karen mentioned so far, folks want this. AB 518 may be adopted by the county upon board direction. As shown on this slide, it limits stays to 14 nights, caps campsites at nine, restricts RVs, requires quiet hours, and sets acreage standards. These requirements would apply if the board elects to integrate low-impact camping into the framework. And staff would like direction, specific direction on this from the board today on whether to pursue this in the county. Next slide. This is the existing table, the famous table, in our zoning ordinance for agricultural lodging. As you can see, ag lodging and homestays are currently permissible or can be permitted through an admin, MUP, or CUP process. It even notes that ag lodging, as someone I think noted in public comment, is an accessory and subordinate use to an ag operation, as determined by the ag commissioner. This table is the foundation for potential amendments if the board directs us to proceed today. Based on the information gathered so far, staff have concluded that only minor updates to the zoning ordinance would be needed. For example, we may clarify or change the levels of approval in this table if certain conditions are met. Next slide. So here's staff's recommendation today. As mentioned, we have a good foundation and feel confident with our recommendations. There are a lot of steps still to go in the process as noted repeatedly in this presentation and as you heard in public comment. But what we're seeking today is just concrete direction to help us facilitate more meaningful public input with the community and specifically the ag community and key stakeholders. We can't continue that work until we know kind of what direction we're headed in. And so I just wanted to thank you for your time today, and we're happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Ms. Graybill, and thank you, Ms. Garner, for that presentation lot to unpack there. And I'm sure that there's going to be a lot of questions and comments by the board. So I'm ready to dig in if you are. We're ready. Do you want to jump in?

I'll go ahead.

Okay. Supervisor Parlin. So...

I started thinking about it after, and thank you for everybody that made public comments. Mike, I really wish you would reach out and we could talk. I would really like that. You've refused. I think that we're actually on the same page, and I'd love to talk with you. So think about that, please. But I also spent, not all weekend, just Sunday, thinking about this topic, and I did not understand why is it such a big deal when it's already in our zoning? And that's what a lot of folks said, it's already in here. And my recollection is we gave direction back in September of 2024 to hash out the ag lodging to make sure that, so in September 2024, we were updating the VHR ordinance and it became very clear that day that the ag and the VHRs was not clear anywhere in our zoning. There wasn't clarity. It kept coming up over and over, and we actually put in a special statement during that update to make sure that anyone that was operating a VHR, we put up air quote fingers basically on ag property, because of the lack of clarity at that time, We weren't gonna do any enforcement on them. I still remember that. And then the direction was staff clear this up for us so that we have our ordinances talking to each other. And here we are two years, I'm sorry. I wasn't frustrated until this morning and I heard the comments and it's like, and then you're saying basically, oh yeah, it is in here. We just need to get some standards to make it happen. Oh my gosh, what on earth took so long? So super frustrating. I did reach out to some folks and a couple things came up. Primary use always comes up in conversation. We had this with ranch marketing. Are we gonna use the same definitions as in ranch marketing? I'll be honest with you guys, I haven't even had a chance to meet with our new Ag Commissioner. I have no idea where you are on this, none. And I wanted to have that opportunity. So that's a big concern because I think everyone will agree, this whole concept is being implemented to make sure that our Ag Producers I like Pam, you used the word legitimate ag producers, you know, want to have a way to supplement their income. Because as we've said over and over again, certain, you know, ag crops are struggling and suffering and others just have waves, you know. So that needs to be hashed out because that's a huge concern, that primary concern. And so in my mind, that has to be in the standards, no matter what, it's already there. 20 acre minimum on the three ag types, I think is a good place to start. I couldn't tell from the comments if everybody else agreed with that. I just, I couldn't tell if I think so. I think we need to set a setback. from the property lines for adding these ag. Basically, the way I'm seeing it is that if you're an ag producer on ag land, you got your crop, you want some supplement income, you need to live on that property while you're doing your ag production. And you're the host. You need to be there. And I will say that in the past, with all the issues we've had, with ranch marketing over the years, every time that we had problems, it seemed that it was because the ag producer themselves did not live on the property. It seems like that was a very clear pattern. I talked about that many times about our prior ag commissioner, and that's how she felt about that, that the folks that are the ag producers, the property owners must live there, and they're hosting. I think the intent of the... zoning is so that um we can invite people in and say this is what ag is a lot of folks don't even know what you know how an ag place operates and so that was kind of like we're hosting and showing folks how important agriculture is and maybe some of your food comes you know like this so um i i don't know camping i do think should be considered and talked about just separately. The ag lodging is already in our zoning. Let's make it happen. I don't know why it should take very long if it's already here. I don't understand why it should take very long to get this done. Just set up some standards, get her done. I will say, though, on the chart, That shows the types of permits. The one change that I would recommend, based on our experience with VHRs, based on our experience with ranch marketing over the years, is that each type should have an admin permit. And the reason why, and an admin permit is simple and not expensive, just making that clear to everybody, but so that the county has a piece of paper and a permit And then if you're a violator, we can pull that permit. That's our only leverage. We found in the past, if there is no admin permit, we don't have a piece of paper, it's really hard to do enforcement. We have zero leverage. And so that would be the only thing I saw on the chart that maybe needs to change is, so it would be the ones that have the P's, I think it is. P's are permissible, right? Yeah, change the P's to A's, and that should be fine. And make it simple, simple and very inexpensive. Have clear criteria, those standards you're talking about, which I don't think are that hard to come up with. It sounds like we had some really good input on them. Let's get this done. Talk about camping in a different – I don't think we want to merge them all together. I could be wrong, but I do think we need to just talk about camping separately. And reminder to everyone – At this time, Colorado County does not collect DTOT on camping. It's not been approved by the voters. So it's a different ball of wax. And I think that's enough said by me.

Okay. Other questions, comments? Mr. Turnbull.

Yeah, I just got a couple of questions. You know, The low-impact camping, I think, could be a real good thing, benefit for a county. But the concerns that I have is fire. And when you're having a campsite per acre, do you drive a vehicle to that particular site? Because my concern is catalytic converter. Catalytic converter can be anywhere from 1,200 to 1,600 degrees. And then also, it could actually range up to 2,000 degrees. And we've had the sand fire that was, you know, that happened because of a catalytic converter. We had a problem with the catalytic converter that just happened here on E16 by Happy Valley Road. And that could have been very, very bad, especially if that thing really would have got going. So I have a lot of concerns, especially with that, because there was a particular person that was advertising campsites. This has happened years ago, just after I took office, before the Caldor fire happened. And basically, we're driving through tall grass to get to these campsites. And it was very, very critical because it was a dirt road, but it was grown in the center. And my problem is, what if it would have started a fire? So who would be liable if we pass these, like having campfires and that, would it be a liability on the county? Could it be, especially if a fire gets started? And could it impact us? So I'm just concerned about it. I think we need to address that. Especially on these sites is it going to be gravel road is going to be mode where people can drive into these where it's not going to impact you know Especially starting a fire. That's that's the biggest concern and people are really You know they're really scared right now, especially after what happened in the Kaldor fire so I think we need to address that problem, and I think I i think it's right i think i think we should have just only propane barbecues allowed and i don't think we should have open pit because also cal fire puts a ban on a lot of that stuff during periods of time too so i think something we could address but i think it could be a good thing it could be a benefit to the county so anyway thank you uh supervisor of your camp

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks for the opportunity to talk about this item. I too want to bifurcate these two. The camping side of it to me is almost a special use permit. There's so many possibilities that could go wrong and they have to be evaluated. And I would want them consistent with any other camping that we do right now. So there are some standards out there. As far as the ag lodging, it is something that is already done. I'd like to know, Karen, maybe you could answer, what's the primary response you're getting back on why people aren't doing it? Is it just a process? Is it they don't understand it or what? But to me, it's fairly simple. It's almost like a VHR opportunity. And the two should mirror each other, I think, because it's really the same thing other than maybe the acreage size. um with buffer you've got an ag buffer for your crop so i'm not too concerned uh about that um an admin permit or whatever permit we do for vhr the same the same sort of thing because it is the same um in my mind uh 20 acres versus 10 20 does keep it to primarily the ag purpose, but there's some pretty good ag ventures out there going, working on 10 as well. That gets into that question about, you know, is it, is it a revenue crop or is it a crop or a, a endeavor that's not truly for agriculture. And that's a question that we'll be working on moving forward as we pursue the ranch marketing ordinance and the problems in there. I think that ordinance has been expanded to where it's creating problems now because it sets up possibilities for going outside the box. And I think we're seeing the repercussions of that. No, no, we're going to end up there. But again, trying to stick to the ag lodging, I think it's should it's there. It should be allowed the simplified as process as we can. And we'll deal with the camping in a in a separate, separate venue on on slide seven. There's a concern that I have. when we talk about the projected annual costs, there's no recognition in it at all for I saw the DTOT and immediately got excited about DOT. No, no, that's not what it is. How about our road impacts? Our roads are traveled a lot due to, you know, the agritourism. And when I think the last financial analysis that was done, the minimal amount of money that actually came in sales tax and so forth to the county didn't cover the road impact. So that's something we have to be concerned about and address. And certainly as we move ahead with the camping side of stuff, which I'm assuming we will eventually, we have to make sure there's TOT in there so we can cover our costs and the impacts of the road. uh if if ag lodging is simplified and we make it more successful i think the the dtot will help offset that amount as well and lisa gives us discretionary money to put into the to the dot um maintenance budget so that's where i stand right now thank you supervisor ferrero

Not a lot of ag in District 1. But I have some thoughts, and I support both of you. I support the lodging and the camping, but I do understand why you may want to split them, and I could support that also. The concerns with camping, AB 518 kind of opens the door for us, and... It would make our process much easier, but we can, especially regarding fires, we can do whatever we want as far as restrictions require gravel driveways, paved driveways, parking lots, allow fires and don't allow fires. I mean, we can do what we want on that. I don't even see that's an issue. I do think that the... process for either or should be should be streamlined make it easier i'm kind of indifferent on the size of land whether it's 10 or 20 um for lodging now um i'd probably be fine with 10. um i do have a question regarding because we're talking about uh initially starting this with with ag zone land but we have is it right when there's 18 there's 18 parcels in rural land that's currently operating. Is that correct?

Yeah, in the ag zone land, we're seeing that there's 18 properties that are generating TOT. That could be because they have a VHR. It could be because they're doing ag lodging. It could even be, as we discussed, that they are doing something without a permit, but they're still collecting TOT. Okay.

So are there people currently outside of the ag land, outside of ag land that are operating? And are they legal or illegal or a mix?

I don't think we have a way of knowing that. And that's why Karen gave you the three categories. We just know that we're collecting TOT. Okay.

I guess my question was, well, what are we going to do with those? If they are operating outside of ag and they're operating currently legally, what are we going to do? What are we going to do with that? So whether we grandfather them in or something, I don't want to have to, you know, I don't want to create something today and have to come back next year and tweak it. I do, based on the recommendations from the public, I really would like a formal recommendation from the Ag Commission and our Ag Commissioner also, who's brand new. But I think we need to get her input as well. So those are my thoughts as of now.

I was going to... say some of that as well so i'll agree that um i really think the public i don't think we've heard clearly what they want even the survey as you point out it may be the second best survey we've ever done but we have a population on the west slope of 160 000 people so when 600 reply to your point that's really maybe not statistically valid um there was a comment made that there are seven different ag districts uh here on the west slope are each of those represented through the ag commission or how does their voice bubble up how do we hear from them

I think that was actually a reference to Placer County Ag District, but we do have, for example, it is here, so like Fair Play.

Yeah, we have the districts. There's a Cool, yeah, Gold Hill, whatever. We have the ag districts, and I think if I'm looking at the maps correctly, they're denoted in the blue perhaps. Is it the blue outlines on them?

map you guys is anybody looking at the map well and do each of those districts are do they send a representative that sits on the ag commission so we hear that whole voice or no they're more separated and isolated yeah and just so you know for your reference the last time back in 2000

let's say 14, when the county was doing the last general plan update and TGPA, ZUU and all of that, they did some fine-tuning, if I remember, on the ag districts and parcels. Don't laugh, I know it was not a fun process to watch, but they actually didn't do it by district so much as they sent out actual letters to each and every ag parcel owner. was the last time that significant changes were done. And my recollection is it had to be done twice because the first one that went out was confusing. And so there was a second letter went out. But to your point, I don't believe there is any structure for each of the ag districts to have like a cohesive you know thought um but based on somebody made a comment about was it lauren maybe made about the ag districts um because they do they are in different parts of the county different elevations different soils different cro you know it would be maybe a smart thing to do maybe just for workshopping purposes workshop in each ag district um but again the stuff that we're trying to do today in my mind it's already in the code let's just get this done um And I think that, you know, the recommendation was the three zones, 20 acre parcels to start because it's kind of like we need a starting point. And starting with the 10 acre parcels just might be a little bit overwhelming is the gist I got. It's a lot.

So my follow-up question then to staff would be if in fact there is this I think the term that uses by right mentioned in one, two, three, four, five, at least five zones. What do we do with the zones that you're not recommending we expand this or that we hone in on in the beginning? I mean, what do they do? Are we taking away their right to do what is currently in our general plan now?

Well, I think to conversation that Supervisor Parlin brought up earlier is we want to simplify the process, particularly if it's an administrative permit. And be very clear, if you submit a complete application, it's going to take us, you know, X days to review. And when I say X days, I don't know the exact number, but, you know, we're talking, you know, a week or two, three at the most to review, small fee for that review. And if you check all the boxes of whatever criteria we come up with, you're good to go. You can go do your thing. If you're asking for something above and beyond our standards, then it might take a higher level of review and a little more time. And an example of that is, say for example, we decide maximum number of ag lodging units on a parcel is three. But then someone comes in and says, well, I've got a hundred acre parcel and I'd really like four. that might be where, well, that could make sense, but we need to do a little bit, you know, you can't check all the boxes, you check all but one. So we're going to take this slightly higher level of review and make sure that that additional unit you're asking for is not going to create any impacts that we've identified. So that's kind of how we want to set it up. Yes, there are currently, I think it's just a couple that are permitted by right right now. i honestly don't know of anybody that's taking advantage of that but then again because it's by right they don't have to come in and get any type of of permit so um but i just no one has come forward and said oh i'm operating ag lodging right now so um again going back to my earlier comments i think it is because right now that's all we have is that matrix on our zoning code that does not tell anybody what the expectations are of how to operate, how to implement and make sure you're doing the fire safety. What setbacks do I need? None of those things are defined. And so that's what we're trying to do here is define it. And again, like we have done with VHRs and other programs. It's not just, it's in the code. You're creating a program to support it behind it so that everybody is clear of exactly what they need to do in order to comply, in order to get that administrative, easy permit and be out the door.

It's like creating a website and not telling anyone you've created it. So that's what we're trying to do here today.

Well, and like Supervisor Ferrero, I have to really work hard to catch up on what the different issues are and what the problems are to be helpful to coming up with good solutions. I think Supervisor Vierkamp asked the question, why have so few people done anything in this regard? When you look at the chart, it is pretty easy to get an administrative permit or to get a permit to already do this in so many zones. So, you know, what do we think is going to be different if we have it be permitted where people have to come forward, pay a small fee, whereas right now they suppose many of them are just doing it and we don't even know who they are. So is the point of the county bringing this forward to try to streamline it in such a way that we know who's doing what and we have minimal restrictions around it? Is that what we're trying to focus on? And how do we make this work for all the zones when it's permitted by right now anyway?

Yeah, I think it is trying to streamline it for sure and just put definitions behind it. Because right now, even if you're applying for administrative permit, someone could come in, fill out our application, and give us a site plan. And, you know, but they're kind of guessing what it is that we are looking for or what our concerns will be. They might not even know to show like, hey, you know, I got to make sure that the road to wherever this lodging is on my property that it's if we decide it has to be at least a gravel road and X feet wide to make sure of fire safety or to make sure that they're set back from their neighboring property by a certain distance. None of that is out there in the world. So it's a big unknown if someone were to apply today. And I think that is probably part of it is the fear that somebody is going to come in, submit, put all this time and effort into submitting a site plan. And then we're going to send it back to them with a bunch of comments saying, well, you need to increase your setback. You need to show that, you know, your roads are adequate. You need to show that there's some kind of fire safety guidelines That's, I think, why there's the hesitancy right now to participate in this program. I would anticipate as well that at the end of the day, once we do have all those regulations, then we can market that. We can actually be proactive in getting that information out there, have brochures, have on our website what's expected, how to apply what is needed, and actually encourage people to take advantage of this opportunity.

And I'd really like to encourage that the effort to reach out to the public be rather generous. And I really would, I almost don't want to even pick from the list of options you've given us today. I would like to really hear from the people who this will affect or who represent people that'll be affected by this and hear what their judgment is because you know, in my mind, I could definitely go with, let's start with the most conservative and we can always expand the program. But if the community is ready for, you know, no, we're ready to do this on Ag land and rural lands over 10 acres, I wanna hear that. I don't wanna personally contain us today. I think what you've put together gives a good starting point for the discussion, but I think the discussion needs to be had. And again, welcome to our new Ag Commissioner. We're definitely interested in you getting involved in this and giving us your experience.

Yeah, I would concur, Brooke. I think it's important to get feedback from our new Ag Commissioner, as well as the Ag Commission on that particular item. Absolutely. If they concur, then we'll set it based on what they recommend.

And you want the public's voice, but would that Ag Commission be representing the public's voice? Right, that would be the way I'm hearing it.

Yeah, I think it absolutely could be, but I'm a little bit dismayed to hear that we have seven distinct Ag districts and they're not at the table, especially with regards to Ag Commission. So additional outreach as well to make sure we're really hearing from everybody. And as was mentioned, There are very distinct districts. You know, we've got grazing, we've got crops, we've got timberland. So, you know, I think we want to hear all those voices. I do.

Yeah, and I think that's very much our intent. That's what we heard when we did go to the Ag Commission to really engage with each ag industry. Certainly, we can do that with those seven districts. And Rob sent me the map. I think it was directly pulled from the general plan where I can see where those seven districts are located. I think staff's intent behind today's presentation was really just to, should we keep working on this? Are we working towards likely zoning ordinance amendments? Direct us to establish a program. We kind of need some sideboards before we just jump into the deep end, so to speak. We wanna make sure we're working in the right direction. We wanted to check back with you after we gathered all the data and information as we were directed to do in 120 days. I just want to note 120 days, it might seem like a long time, but it flies. And so we did as much as we could in those 120 days. And what we're coming back to you with is really You know, we did some initial public outreach, not nearly enough. We've heard that loud and clear. Our intention was to very much so go back out and gather more information. But we're also using our education, our experience. You know, we gathered additional data that we presented today. And so that's what you're seeing in front of you. CAO Phillips.

Yeah, so just trying to help out and help that, make sure that staff has some clear direction. What it sounds like I'm hearing is maybe we're not ready to talk about acreage limitations and those types of things today, and maybe not even zones, the ag zones in the matrix, but As Ms. Graybill said earlier, this matrix really could be the foundation that we're building off of. So what it sounds to me is potentially we need to spend some time first defining what agricultural lodging is, what each of these things in the matrix is, before you feel like you can talk about where you want those activities to occur. And working on those definitions, I think, is going to have to come from the public as well, and the Ag Commission, the Ag community, and these discussions about, you know, what is an agricultural homestay? As an example, in our current ordinance, and I think this is kind of the point staff is trying to make, is agricultural homestays are defined pretty broadly. You know, it says, for example, the use is limited to a maximum of three guest rooms for up to six guests at any one time. Does that mean three guest rooms in one house? Does that mean you can have three cottages? You know, I think that that is not clear, and those are the kinds of things that, potentially we need to flesh out before you can start deciding how many acres are appropriate to have three separate guest houses and situations like that, number of guests. So I think there is more work to do with the public, but staff is looking for generally Do you want them to work on this matrix, start working on those definitions? Do you want to include low-impact camping in one of those definitions that we might flesh out without deciding today in what zone it might be allowed, but working on fleshing out the addition or the definition? Yeah. So I don't know if that's, is that helpful?

Yeah, that's super helpful. And I think just to maybe put it a different way, this is the way we've been viewing this is this is like a pre ROI. Like we don't quite know exactly all the tweaks we want to make. We're not ready to make the exact, you know, that exact, resolution of intention that formal recommendation because we we need to engage with the ad community more as noted um but this is sort of like a pulse check with the board a pre-roi if you will to just try to get direction do you want us to go down this road do you want us to continue working towards that um with acknowledgement that we need to obviously we have a new ad commissioner we spoke with her on friday um you know we need to re-engage with the ad commission the ad community the seven districts the neighbors so there's a lot of work ahead of us but pulse check pre-roi other comments questions no i think it's important that what we've talked about on the camping side

staff always can be working on gathering information there. But right now I think it's the, at least I'm getting the understanding that let's get this done and done, you know, quickly with the right information from those involved. I mean, just take TPZ for example. So who are you going to reach out to? Well, the bigger landowners for service, Sierra Pacific and in the private landowner. So we haven't, went out and talked to those folks yet about what they want to allow or not allow on their property, highly unlikely there's going to be any VHR type of hosted rental or anything else on those lands. But the other ones, we do need to reach out to them and get their inputs as well. And I think the Ag Commission is a great avenue for that.

Other comments, questions, supervisor, I was, I was gonna suggest that we direct staff to look at both the lodging and the camping simultaneously. But simultaneously, but separately, especially if we're going to be bringing in the public to, you know, comment on this stuff. And then the you mentioned occupancy, and Just wanted to really make sure that we don't start contradicting what we just approved last week with VHRs. So just, we made those approvals, especially regarding occupancy last week. Probably be pretty easy just to be consistent with those moving forward with that. That's a good starting point.

Anything above, Karen, you're right. It's gonna take a special process to be reviewed for, because there's reasons why we set those limits.

Supervisor Perlin. Yeah, I just want to reiterate that also the whole reason we started on this path, I recollect specifically back in September of 2024 was because we had updated the VHR ordinance and the clarity between that and ag lodging in the zoning was not clear at all. So that needs to make sure they're talking to each other. We mentioned that over and over and over. They need to be talking to each other. And I know, Karen, when you and I met, I guess yesterday, it's been a blur. We did talk about also that with this, folks are going to have to probably choose which they want to do. We're not going to have everybody wanting the capability to do all of these at once because that would be overwhelming work. on one parcel. And that's not, we don't want to make negative impacts. We want, really want this well done so that it's successful. It'd be nice to have that. And then the other thing I'm just going to throw it out there is in my mind, the reason that 20 acres kind of made sense as a starting point is because of if we are going to stick with primary use of being the minimum crop size of five acres, and then you also must have the residents and, you know, primary residents there at a couple outbuildings, it's going to get really squishy on 10 acres and maybe a little over impacting. So it just seemed like 20 was a nice place to start to get something done quickly. And I agree with Supervisor Vierkamp. I really, would like to see the focus on getting the ag lodging and the VHR ordinances talking to each other and just getting these done quickly because they're already in our zoning and there's obviously a want for this and I'm concerned about asking staff to do parallel paths with the camping and the ag lodging at the same time. I know you guys' resources are limited, and I know when we ask too much at one time, it gets a little, and then we'll still end up taking forever. I guess that's my point is like, let's get one done as quick as possible and focus. You'll hear about camping along the way. Sure, gather those notes, but let's get the ag lodging and the VHRs set up for success would be really lovely.

And maybe I'll just ask this question of clarification as well. And that is, when I look at what's before us with regards to low impact camping, I don't see why that needs to be separated from everything else that we're doing. So what is the nuance that makes my colleagues feel like those are separate things when I see them kind of as the same thing?

Well, I got a comment on that. I think the biggest thing is addressing wildfires. It could happen, especially people driving through different areas and be able to set up their campsite. If you look at all the different camping that's out there, like Comanche, you talk about all the forest services at Loon Lake and Ice House. They're blacktop, the vehicles park on blacktop, and then they have their tents in a different area. And that's some of the things that need to be addressed. How are we gonna resolve that problem? Is it gonna be gravel all the way? Or is it gonna be paved? to access that? Are the people going to be picking them up and then taking them up to the certain campsites? I think that's something that needs to be addressed because I don't want to end up with another wildfire, which could happen and that could impact our county. So I think those are some of the things that could be addressed. Because the Forest Service, it never used to be You used to be able to go over and camp wherever you wanted, but now they have a lot of restrictions and stuff, and they have a camp host. So I think it's something we could look in and see what their model was and how we could put that in place.

Other of my colleagues chime in on that.

I would agree. It's just a little more complicated. And sometimes when you just say, hey, go camp, people have their own interpretation of what that is. And I'd like it a little bit more structured than that, mainly for the protection of our residents as well as public safety. Unfortunately, in this day and age. Now, there might be some places that already have meet all that criteria, but there needs to be a process that we would evaluate

Okay. Well, thank you for that insight.

With ag lodging too, you know, you're talking about ag properties that might already have secondary buildings. I mean, that was so common on ranches to have secondary buildings already there waiting for this clarification. you know, to be able to use them with a permit so that it's all good. So that was another thing that, you know, we've kind of fleshed out, I think, in a conversation, Karen, I can't remember. But, you know, that there's properties out there already with the buildings waiting for some kind of permit for use to lodge folk and host them, you know. So it should be a little bit more straightforward. The camping one, I do think, just because El Dorado County is so fire sensitive. We just are, it's gonna actually need a lot more thought and the where it even should go. Maybe it shouldn't even be on egg parcels. Maybe it should be elsewhere. Maybe it should only be in certain parts of the county. I don't know, but I think that the campaign really needs a bigger look.

Okay.

Might I suggest that perhaps as we're doing some outreach, since we're doing outreach on ag lodging, it really is not a lot of extra time to take additional input regarding low impact camping, but then the actual ordinance will split off and go separate paths and look at some best practices perhaps from some other communities that have already set this up particularly in communities that have a lot of high fire hazard areas and see what they're doing um and we'll then we'll have a better sense of how big of a lift it would be for at the low impact camping

That's excellent. Okay, thank you for that clarification. Do you feel that you have enough informal direction or do you want formal direction?

I personally do not have enough direction. Yeah, maybe we can, Kim, would you mind just pulling up the slide again, potentially? And then I can also, I have a Word document that I could pull up, but maybe first we can just start with the slide.

Page 18, the last slide in the deck. Sorry, Kim.

Yeah, I think it's, I mean, the first one is just receive and file additional information. So that's easy enough. The second one I think is written fairly generally enough that it might still apply. Maybe the one exception is that it was brought up of what zones it applies to at the end of staff recommendation number two it says ag grazing planned ag limited ag if you want to strike that if you want us to keep those or you know just based on this conversation what i'm hearing and correct me if i'm wrong is that seems logical makes sense but let's still get additional input on what zoning areas we're talking about and then eventually come back with those specific recommendations so If that's accurate, then perhaps just striking out that at the end of that second recommendation.

I have a question. Karen, what's the, you know, in the zone ordinance, when you talk about ag zone properties, very clearly, you know, agricultural endeavors are supposed to be the primary use. What's the primary use of rural lands? It's not the same.

That's a good question, actually, something to look at of how, if that's defined differently for rural lands.

Because I think that at this moment, I mean, our focus really is to be helping our ag producers. And so I just feel like that makes it easier to focus on the ag lands right now. So maybe that's something to flesh out in all of this to make it make more sense.

Yeah. I mean, to your point, like if you look at the definition of like the timber zone, it's very specific of what that is, what it means, how it's supposed to operate, all those things. And it is, I would say, you know, quite a bit different from the other ag zones. So point taken.

Yeah. So that might make it easier if we look at that. intention with its purposes and the zoning, maybe it is, it will make it easier just to focus in on the Ag zone. But that would be a good thing to explore. And again, to me, it's just to make it – I'm just trying to help this along more quickly, to be honest, to help those folks that are wanting this secondary source of income, you know, to supplement their ag production. That's my understanding, the whole goal of this. So the more we can keep it, you know, simple and focused, I think the better this will go. And you can always expand later, to your point, but – And if we were to, let's say, just stick with the kind of the starting point that you had outlined earlier, and you get the ordinance update and all that, how hard is it to then amend it to increase it later?

I think that's a lot easier. It would certainly be harder if we started large and then something didn't work or it was too overwhelming and then to scale back because at that point people have already invested in this. So we don't want to do that. Okay.

So again, I'm just trying to help it be focused so it can move more quickly.

Other comments, thoughts? Somebody want to take a stab at a motion?

Do you feel we need a motion? I mean, direction's pretty clear to me. I mean, I would include- I thought I heard you say, yeah, that you wanted direction.

Do you want a formal motion or can, you know, basically what we're, well, we're saying a couple different things up here, so I can see where your confusion is.

Okay, okay.

My thought was not to hone in on any particular option at this point, but to hear from the ag community and have them help us decide what the focus needs to be. So, I mean, I would support the motion without identifying exactly which option we're thinking of. But I think we all agree that starting smaller and making sure that we're not creating unintended consequences and expanding the program is a logical way to go. But like I said, I'm not prepared to decide if 20 acres is the right number or 10 acres, but I'd love to hear from the community that this affects what their thoughts are. The numbers aren't like wildly different between the 20 acres and the 10 It was like 966 parcels that it would affect if it was 10 and it goes up to like 1500, excuse me, other way, 20. There's 966 parcels that would be affected if you did the 20 acres and it only jumps up another 500 if you do the 10 acres. So again, I'm not prepared to decide which one's best. I'd love to hear from the people who are affected. So I would support the motion without diving into the options.

Let me make a suggestion here. So a motion to direct long range planning unit to pursue amendments to the zoning ordinance regarding temporary ag lodging activities as a supplemental use. and end it there. Direct Department of Ag to work with Planning and Building Department to form and staff a program to support the proposed zoning ordinance amendments, whatever program we come up with. And then four, maybe, or adding another one to say, your direction is to continue to do outreach to stakeholders and to refine the criteria and standards to support this ordinance.

In conjunction with the Ag Commission.

Should we direct that to get a formal recommendation from the Ag Commission?

Typing as fast as I can. You're doing well.

I would have been backspacing by now.

So is it fair to say that staff will work from the existing matrix in the ordinance code? And because I just want to note that because it does include rural lands as a zoning where these activities are allowed. So at this point, we're not looking to narrow that. We're looking to refine the criteria, come up with some definitions, get more feedback before you come back and consider whether you want to revisit the zones where these activities are allowed.

that fair i think so i'm a little confused on item two of staff recommendation not here but on the presentation uh lodging activities as a supplemental use on land zone is ag grazing planned ag and limited ag just so that does it currently have to be a supplemental use or any ag related zoning it's permitted

That was just intended to mean ag is still primary. Right.

This is in support of it. Those go away. And anything ag related with the 20 acres and the primary use is ag. Okay. I think we're there. I do. So if that's Karen's motion, I'll make it.

Um, just real quick pausing. Um, I just want to, um, understand low impact camping. Are we including that as highlighted on the screen?

Um, or are we excluding camping at this point? My opinion?

Yeah, we were going to take it out. So thank you. Hold on, please. Just let us work through this. Um, I think what I'm hearing is we're taking out and low impact camping in number two, but I would recommend a number six where we say gather additional information on the benefits of low-impact camping. Because you said that as part of your outreach, you're going to hear about that anyway. So we want to gather that information, but I am hearing from my colleagues that they think they're too they're similar topics, but they're two different approaches.

And, and I just want to make note that it would certainly be more efficient for staff as we're going out into the ad community and doing all of this work to certainly get that input then. And as Karen noted previously, we can come back, we're going to be coming back to the ad commission, coming back to the board and we can report out what we, what we've heard. And then again, this is, we're a pre ROI, um, you, you know, we can, we can come back to the board and then we can make the decision then on how we treat the two. Cause we understand they're different. I don't know if you want to

Yeah, I think it's, you know, there, they can be two separate ordinances that we can try and keep it on, you know, timing wise on as close of a track as possible. There are different, there are going to be different criteria and regulations associated with the low impact camping that are different from the ag lodging. But again, getting that feedback now, and we can, And as we get that feedback, we'll have a better sense of exactly what that looks like. But we'll try and keep it going.

Yeah, I think Supervisor Turnbull said it very well. The fire impact is important, but there's also sanitation impacts.

Environmental impacts.

We can be set up to house people in houses, but camping is another story and how you're going to deal with the sanitation component. Not that it can't be done, but I think right now let's get this piece done. And if you get some good inputs there, then fine, note them and we'll talk about it.

I think the good news is because the state has made this low-impact camping easier in terms of environmental, there are a lot of communities that are taking advantage of it. So again, I'm going to look to those communities, best practices, how is it working, and those will be part of our recommendations for sure.

Excellent, and I would just say on number six, I know I used the word benefits, but I think we just want you to provide additional information on low-impact camping, yeah.

And I think concerns.

That's why if we take out the word benefits, it involves both. Okay, so do you need a little time to look over this? Supervisor Vierkamp, you wanted to move this item?

I think staff had one more.

Sorry, I just wanted to make note as you guys were talking, I just wanted to make sure everyone knows that we're planning on working hand-in-hand. Our department is planning on working hand-in-hand with the Ag Department, and so I tweaked the different recommendations to include that.

I see that, yes, with the Department of Agriculture. Excellent. Okay. Supervisor Vierkamp has moved this item. Is there a second?

I'll second it.

Supervisor Turnbull seconded. Is there any further discussion, comments on the motion? Okay, seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Motion passes 5-0.

Okay, excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks, Deanna. Thanks, Karen.

Let's go ahead and just take a 10-minute break and we'll be back at 11.20. Welcome back to the Board of Supervisors regularly scheduled meeting. We took a short little break there and I would like to handle item number 28. Ms. Dawson, could you read that one into the record? Of course.

Item number 28 comes from Supervisor Lane recommending the board authorize a chair to sign a proclamation in recognition of September 11th in memory of that tragic day in 2001 when our nation was brutally attacked by terrorists resulting in an enormous loss of American lives.

Thank you for that introduction. On a day that began as ordinary as any other, terrorists murdered thousands of our fellow compatriots. With shock and disbelief, we watched our first responders hindered by debris and smoke, rush with conviction and courage into the void to rescue those in despair. With pride and sorrow, We felt the tremendous bravery of those aboard Flight 93 who summoned the courage to charge the terrorists in a counterattack and saved countless American lives. As the day closed, America steadied its resolve to hold accountable those who had attacked us and ensure it would never happen again. The smoke that rose from the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania field carried away the souls of innocent Americans. As we recall the images of our American flag raised from the ashes of Ground Zero and the Pentagon, we are reminded that good triumphs over evil. Many laid down their lives. The courage, heroism, and resilience Americans displayed on 9-11 and in its aftermath are perpetual testaments to the spirit of our country. While our nation was anguished by this attack, the grit displayed that day, the very essence of America, was a reminder that our citizens have never failed to rise to the occasion. Heroes sprang into action in the face of great peril to help save their fellow Americans. We recommit ourselves to fortify our cherished American values so that future generations will know in their souls that the United States is the land of the free and the home of the brave. In our packets is a resolution that for those of you attending 9-11 ceremonies, if you wish to use that resolution, you may. All right, we have three closed session items that I would, I believe we can knock a couple of them out. No?

Yeah, you don't need public comment, but a motion to approve.

Being a first responder who sent crews and...

dealt with impacts after, I will gladly and honorably move this proclamation.

I'll second that. Well, both of us tied, okay.

There's a motion, and everybody seconded it. We'll give it to Supervisor Ferraro. We'll give it to Ferraro.

And I just want to thank you for bringing this. I remember the day like it was this morning, and I hope it doesn't take another day like this to bring our country together like it did back then.

Yeah, and one of the things is I recommend... Especially our small little church rings a bell at 11 a.m. 11 times.

There is a motion and a second. Any further comments? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Motion passes 5-0.

Thank you. Sorry for skipping that step. We'll now move into closed session. Mr. Livingston.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. Having already heard public comment on closed session, the board will now hear items one through three as specified on the agenda. And my understanding for the benefit of staff listening in that we will hear item one before lunch with items two and three to happen later in the day.

Okay, perfect. All right, we're in recess. Thank you and welcome back El Dorado County. This is our regularly scheduled meeting of the Board of Supervisors of August 25th. We are back from closed session and a short lunch break. County Council, do we have anything to report out?

The Board heard item number one and there's no action to report out.

Thank you. All right, let's go ahead and move into open forum. Ms. Dawson.

For public comment, each speaker will have three minutes to address the board. A timer will alert you when 30 seconds remain and again when your time has ended. We'll begin with comments from individuals present in the boardroom followed by those participating via Zoom. If you're joining via Zoom, please ensure you unmute yourself when called upon. If you're joining by phone, press star nine to raise your hand. If you're on Zoom, use the raise hand feature to indicate your interest in speaking. We ask that you voluntarily state your name for the record before beginning your comments.

Good afternoon.

Hi, good afternoon. Kelly Naleviah, District 1. I'm here in honor of Overdose Prevention Day, which is August 29th. So I want you all to do something with me. And I'm going to encourage the audience, anybody watching, to do the same thing. Just follow along. So on the count of three, I want everybody to hold their breath. One, two, three. Hold your breath. So right now, your brain's probably thinking, I got this. I'm holding my breath. Your brain hasn't told you you are lacking oxygen quite yet. Some of you may be starting to feel a little bit of the sensation of your brain saying, I might need to breathe here. Some of you have a little bit more capacity and a little longer. This isn't a time to let yourself pass out. If your brain says breathe, breathe. The longer it gets, the more your brain's saying, I think I really need to breathe. At some point, you are going to give up, and you're going to breathe. So you can go ahead and breathe. This is what an addict goes through. over and over and over when they try to reach sobriety. They hold their breath, they get sober, they know they can do it. But again, their brain eventually says, You can use, it's okay. I'd like to talk about a young man named Dakota who died in Placerville about two weeks ago on the streets. He was 24 years old. He was a son, a brother, and a very well-loved uncle. Dakota, since January 1st of 2026, has been arrested and released three times. There were three other incidences prior to that. That is not how we should be dealing with addiction. I've been going through all of the grants, all of the organizations within the county and organizations asking for grant money to be approved by us, and I am seeing nothing effective. Handing out Narcan and pamphlets is great, but that is not how we address addiction. Addiction is a long-term illness. I'm really encouraging you to hopefully work with people like myself who have been through this, who understand this. We need to bring back drug court and we need to establish actual treatment centers that start at 30, 60, 90 and above days for people to even have a chance. Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome. Good afternoon, board. Michael Rinaldi, Farm Bureau. Just kind of a reminder that it is harvest season for farmers. So since we have had an item this morning, I thought I would take the opportunity to visit you again at once since I've pretty much given up the day. I have three items not on your agenda. I hope I can get through some of them. First, transit occupancy tax and the relationship with your B-16 policy that distributes 55% to the west slope where rightfully it is mostly generated and then 28% for the rest of the county. The solution and the answer to that isn't really the policy. It's increasing the west slope contributions so that they're more equal. And that's what I'm here to discuss. Our 10% TOT collection is woefully short considering the region that is more at the 14 and 17%. In order for us to change that, it's likely going to take voters. And I wanna remind you, as I did last week, that the community of voters that are most likely going to participate in that, probably on social media, which is not my favorite place, they're foot soldiers in that process. And so we need to be mindful of how we embrace those community of people, because if that's ever going to happen, it's gonna require their help. I also wanna remind you that overnight visitors can take traffic off the roads, and here's how. So I think the Camino area where we have constrained roadways and constrained parking, have an overnight visitor, you don't reduce the number of vehicle trips, but you certainly reduce them on peak hours. And that's something very significant. It's a discussion we're not having. It's something that we can model and determine its effectiveness. So while you're thinking about overnight visitors, think about how it impacts our traffic on peak hours, particularly in those four months out of the year when it's really critical. And lastly, I want to address agricultural districts. You know, like water, they cross political boundaries. The agricultural districts are areas in our county that have been mapped and adopted with our general plan that identify areas in our county that have soils of importance, federal, state, and local soils of importance. And so those maps are available. I know I provide them in most of my presentations.

Thank you. Welcome.

Hi, Caleb Armstrong. I own like four businesses here in El Dorado County. One of them is a local nonprofit you guys know of. Anyway, I'm a little confused about the coordinated entry process with homelessness in our county. I'm working with one homeless gentleman that I ran into. I got out of my vehicle. I filled up his tank of gas. I gave him a full-time job. He's got a pregnant wife in his car. I got him housing for 12 days. I got him an RV space and I got him a fifth wheel for 1,500 bucks. and I took a family off the street. And when they were going through the coordinated entry process, they were froze up and they weren't able to get housing or security because they couldn't bill their insurance. And I looked into it further, they could have billed their insurance had they taken time and more information. Point being is that through self-sufficiency and providing a transitional job, I got this gentleman off the street, he qualifies for less welfare, I'm pushing him towards self-sufficiency and self-sustainability. And I hope that that's something we can move forward with in El Dorado County is not necessarily providing homelessness, housing and program services to maintain homelessness, but more transitional housing, transitional jobs that actually benefit those members and get them away from homelessness. You'll see that throughout the state of California. We got kind of a big problem with it. And then what else? I got added to the California rebuilding committee. I'm really bad at public comment. I apologize, guys. But the California organization's active in disasters. I got added to that whole rebuilding committee. It's actually a pretty big honor. I'll be going over to Calaveras County tomorrow morning, helping a family rebuild from the gone fire. I'll be interviewed by Fox 40, but I'm going to be talking a little bit about the Title 25 homes and that program that Supervisor Turnbull and Planning and Building Director Karen Gardner did. And I actually have a unique opportunity with a lot of different things because I work in about four to five different counties right now currently, and we're expanding to eight. But I get to see how different local governments, environmental management agencies all work, and they have these different policies in place. So like in Calaveras County, Habitat for Humanity, All of their building fees are waived, and that helps with single-family homeownership. So they just simply apply. Those building fees are waived because that organization is applying. I hope that's something that nonprofit construction corporations should be able to do here in El Dorado County. But other than that, we're working on some stuff. Just want to let you know.

Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome. Thank you.

My name is Janice Toomey. I am a 25-year resident of El Dorado County and a burnout from the Grizzly Flats. I'm still on the fifth wheel. The reason I'm here to talk to you today is because at the Four Corners just a few days ago, there have been some cameras placed. George, you once said, you said on the interview that people don't trust government and that it's sad. No, I do not trust government. Breach of trust. Trust to me is knowing that somebody is not going to intentionally hurt me. You guys are all, the supervisors are in a situation of a higher position of trust. When you go on vacation, if you went on a four-year vacation, you would tell your friend, give them your money, give them your keys, tell them to pay your bills, your taxes, do whatever it takes. What if you came home and they had not only liquidated your assets, but spent the money that you gave them conservatorship over trusteeship? You guys are trustees. You came home to find out that they liquidated and spent your savings on a Lamborghini. That's a breach of trust. You're in a position of trust. I don't remember being told about these. Now I know they go up, but you have misused and misappropriated our funds and use these funds against us. My understanding is that the cameras not only take still shots, but they take your cell phone data. That is a breach, not only of trust, but the fourth, the fifth and the 14th amendments who talk about due process. Our cell phones, okay, we are supposed to be in safety in our place, our home, our property, and our cell phones contain all kinds of stuff. Now, a breach of trust. I believe that it is time to reconsider who we trust in your position. Perhaps maybe it's time to look at the bylaws and look at a recall process for each and every one of you. As for the police, the sheriff, the highest position of authority in this land. And they have lied to me. They have a permission to lie. It's called qualified immunity. I was lied to on the phone that there were only two cameras in El Dorado County. Didn't know much about the ones up there. That is... That is incompetence at best. As what I would like you guys to consider as well, not only those amendments, and I have pocket constitutions for anybody that wants them, but for the record, Title 18, Section 241 and 242, they're both protected by Title 42, which is time in prison and also fines, or both.

Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Good afternoon, board chair. Welcome. I put all my trust in the Lord Jesus, and I'd encourage everybody here to start trusting in the Lord. There's a lot of deception on the land, and I'm fed up with it because God's fed up with it. God said to hate evil, love good, establish judgment in the gate, and it might be the Lord of hosts be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. And if you are not feeling what's going on in the world right now, It should be terrifying to people that don't know the Lord. There's no fear with God, but fear God, that's the beginning of wisdom. Perfect love casts out fear. I'm asking God right now to send forth arrows of deliverance and victory in Jesus' name. When I came and I met Kelly, she lost her son nine months ago to fentanyl. I hate evil. I hate evil. I used to serve evil. I hate it with perfect love because perfect love casts out fear. Thank you, Lord. Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness as iniquity and adultery. Because you have rejected the Lord, he might reject you. I would encourage you, do not reject the Lord Jesus today. Not religion, him. Though Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, says the Lord God, they shall not deliver their sons nor their daughters. They shall only deliver their own lives and their righteousness. For thus saith the Lord God, how much more when I send my four evil judgments against Jerusalem, the sword, famine, the destroying beast, and pestilence. Have we not gone through that the last six years? This should put fear in people right now. Fear the Lord. He's a great God. Humble ourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. I'm coming with compassion this time from the Lord. Hallelujah. I can raise my voice. This is the blessing. Know the Lord. He is God. He has made us and we are his. We are his people and the sheep of his pastor. Enter into the gates with thanksgiving and into the courts with praise. Give thanks unto him and bless his name for the Lord is good. His steadfast love is everlasting and his faithfulness endures to all generations. And I get a little passionate. So praise God. Hallelujah.

Thank you. Welcome.

Hi, I'm Mac, RW McNeil, Grizzly Flats. For a change, I won't be talking on that issue. I'm here because the flock camera issue or whatever security camera, whatever you want to call it, also known as license plate reader cameras. And that's why I wanted to tell you a story. Many years ago, 15 or more, 20, I don't know, years ago, I got a ticket in the mail for running the toll booth on the Golden Gate Bridge. I hadn't been in San Francisco in years. So I tried calling and everything and saying, hey, you know, and all I got was, how are you going to pay? I got a friend of mine to take a picture of the back of my car showing the plate on my car compared to the picture they had sent me. You could see entirely different vehicles. Mailed that in, kept calling. Still, all I got back was, how are you going to pay? When I went to DMV, because then they said I couldn't renew my registration. I said, what can I do about it? It was, we have nothing to do with it. Tough luck, but we can't renew your registration. I went to CHP, officer there, said, we can't help you. But he says, I can tell from looking at this picture what happened. The bracket on that plate, the offender's plate, the bottom bracket, letters were covered. You couldn't tell if it was an E or an F or a T or an I. He says, we see this all the time. And so I've pursued it some more. Who reads these things? Oh, it's an outfit in Chicago. So you can't talk to them. And I said, well, who do I talk to? And they said, well, there's a building that was mailed from a building in San Francisco or somewhere that They said, they've got a steel door and concrete walls with no windows and don't even try to get in. They don't accept visitors. So then I said, well, where's the court I can go to? There's no court. They say, it's not a criminal thing. No, you're going to say, I can't register my vehicle. You're saying I'm illegal, but there's no court. There's nowhere to go. So when you start putting these cameras in and think you're going to help things, Be careful what you're doing. I mean, you've got to have recourse. You've got to have a way for people to stand up and say, there's something wrong here. And the system then didn't allow for that. I don't know now. I even asked politicians and they all go, oh, we don't know. So it would be nice if somebody knew something around here. Thank you.

Thank you. Please hold your applause. Thank you.

Welcome. Hi. Good afternoon. My name is Diana, a neighbor from Code Enforcement KCE 250396-4141 Shoemaker Road in Georgetown. Now open for 483 days. The county assessor record for this parcel APN 060-290-015 show zero permitted structures and zero units on file. The land is legally vacant, entitled to one single family resident that has never built. The case files last recorded site was back in March. Over five months ago, every compliance updates and has come from the owner submitted himself. without identification location, parcel number, or date attached. The case file even documents that one individual living on the property was wanted person arrested and booked by the sheriff's office, confirmed by the owner's own submission to the case file. This owner also holds additional four parcels in the same area. APNs 060-290-016, second one, 060-290-021. Third, 060-300-018. Last one, 060-300-020. With reportedly similar conditions and same cycle from the owner, code enforcement has confirmed in writing that once those parcels are investigated, additional cases should be open. But as of today, none of that has happened. Code enforcement itself already tried to coordinate with environmental management on this. Environmental responded that they were limited in what they could do, and the effort stopped there, despite the property having no permit dwelling and given zero permit structures on record. No permitted septic system either. We separately submitting documentation to the sheriff regarding safety concern on these properties. I'm asking the board to direct the code enforcement, building, planning, and environmental to jointly recreate an actual compliance plan for this property, and it relates parcels with a concrete timeline. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there other members in the boardroom that would like to address the board? Okay, seeing none, may we go online, please?

Now taking public comment from online participants. Taking public comment from 390.

Good afternoon, board. A little slight delay there. But Ken Greenwood here from the Triple Junction headed out to see the Giants hopefully win a game tonight. We're on the road, and we've pulled over. It's safe to talk. Anyway, no on Town & Country. Just went there the other day again, and the roadway has been partially cleared, but the upper part has not. We need that for some fire access, but we don't need it for sewer outfall for the Town & Country project. Um, item two, um, I don't have my notes with me because, and I apologize. Um, but this idea of flock cameras, um, and I asked last week, how many do we have? I don't think we've got an answer to that yet. I would like to maybe, uh, get some response from, uh, Ms. Lane's office on that. Um, I would appreciate it. Um, And anyway, I'm going to go watch the ball game. I think. Nope. Nope. She's good too. She's also a district five person. Anyway, thank you very much and have a great day.

Thank you.

There's no additional public comment.

Okay, well, thank you to the many commenters that brought subject matter to before the board. It's good hearing from each and every one of you. We're going to head into our time certain hearing, which is item number 30 coming from planning and building. I'd like to go ahead and open the public hearing and ask the clerk of the board to read this item into the record.

Item number 30 is a hearing to consider a recommendation for approval from the Planning Commission on Planning and Building Department Long Range Planning Unit proposed amendments to chapter 130.36 of the zoning signs and staff recommending the board take the following actions. One, adopt the addendum to the county's 2015 signed ordinance update final environmental impact report. And two, approve an ordinance adopting amendments title 130 of the El Dorado County Ordinance Code relating to limited use of digital signs in El Dorado Hills community region.

Excellent. I'd like to welcome our planning and building team, Mr. Purcell from senior planning and Ms. Graybill for our manager for long range planning. Welcome back, Ms. Grable. Take it away.

Thank you. We should have a presentation queued up here. Okay. Well, good afternoon. Again, Tom Purcell, Senior Planner with our Long Range Planning Unit. So the project before you today includes a limited set of zoning ordinance amendments related specifically to digital signs in the Eldorado Hills Community Region. For the benefit of today's viewers, today's hearing materials include the following legislature attachments. We have our draft environmental document, the EIR addendum attachment A, our red line draft zoning ordinance amendments under attachment B, clean zoning ordinance amendments attachment C, a staff memo attachment D, and then a copy of today's presentation is added as attachment F. As of today's date, staff have not received any public comments for this item. Next slide. So as most folks may recall, the board recently adopted a broader sign zoning ordinance amendment package which banned most digital signs in the county. After adoption, staff realized that the digital sign limitations were too narrow. And based on board direction through an ROI, staff have been working to remedy this issue over the past several months. The draft zoning ordinance amendments before you today are based on direction from the board signage ad hoc committee. In July, the planning commission with a five O vote recommended the board approve staff recommendations as presented today with a few very minor language clarifications, which are indicated in yellow highlight in the draft red line amendments, which again are on attachment B. mainly just for clarification, not substantive edits only. Next slide. So this slide summarizes the specific direction to staff for the focused amendments to chapters 130, 36 of the zoning ordinance with key project objectives as listed on this slide. As noted earlier, general direction was already provided to staff through the ROI process. And then this exact recommendation was also approved by the board signage ad hoc committee. So that is, these are the amendments moving forward as previously recommended by the ad hoc. Again, to limit new digital signs to the El Dorado Hills Community Region, not disallow any signs visible from US Highway 50 and to require digital signs be site specific and subject to public review through a uniform sign program. Next slide. So a little bit more detail. The proposed amendments before you today are to firstly allow digital signs in the Eldorado Hills community region only, and with the following strict additional limitations. The first, again, digital signs would be prohibited from visibility from US Highway 50. The second, freestanding digital signs would be required to be oriented to minimize visibility from outside a commercial center. And thirdly, digital signs would be limited to digital directory signs. and freestanding signs and directory signs would only be legible from adjacent residential uses. For example, clarifications added to the amendments were regarding font size. So the minimum font size necessary to be legible from adjacent residential uses, but not beyond. Next slide. So for more detail for the amendments, the proposed digital sign amendments also include other limitations as shown on this slide, such as number one, restrictions on sign type. We're allowing freestanding and directory signs only. We're not changing the ban on any other types of digital signs for the Rutter Hills. And the second item is to allow restrictions on the size and maximum number allowed based on the floor area of a specific commercial or retail center. That would not include parking. So the details are shown on this slide and also in table 130-36070-H1 in the ordinance red line edition and also referenced in the staff memo. So just to be clear, these amendments would only apply to the larger shopping destination projects in the El Dorado Hills community region. Just on the staff's anecdotal knowledge, there would be only approximately three existing shopping centers that would even qualify with 100,000, with greater than 110,000 square feet of gross floor area or more. Uh, the largest of those three with details rather Hills town center East, which has around a million square feet of, of score footage. Uh, so this, this slide shows that sliding scale. So the small, the small commercial centers, um, would, would not be allowed any digital signs at all. And then from there, based on the size, we get a few directory signs and then a few more, with the minimums and maximums as shown. Next slide. So we're also amending this section on prohibited signs to be consistent with the ad hocs direction for the amendments for El Dorado Hills. to ensure this language in this section is also consistent with the previous described amendments. So this slide summarizes the amendments to Section 130.36.090 to be consistent with the previous amendments described above. So again, exempt signs must follow all the new and existing requirements as it's illustrated above, and also digital signs must be approved under a uniform sign program. Next slide. So regarding the future, the next steps, if the board was to approve the proposed amendments today, these changes would be effective September 24th of this year in 30 days. Next slide. So with that, staff recommends the board adopt the sign ordinance update EIR addendum, the draft environmental document, and also approve the amendments to chapter 13036 as presented by staff. That concludes our formal presentation. Myself and other staff would be happy to answer any questions at this time.

Thank you for that presentation. I'll bring it to the board for questions, comments. Supervisor Ferraro, this is yours.

I just want to thank you guys. It probably wasn't the week after we passed the ordinance back in, was it September last year, where we got a phone call from town centers and they wanted to do digital signs. Had we known that at the time, we probably could have worked our way around it back in September. But we didn't know. And so I think we have a workable solution now. I think they support it. Hopefully they'll call in and support it. Oh, boy. I got to start over? Yeah.

It's all good.

But yeah, I think this will work for them. And I just want to thank you guys for your effort.

Any other comments, questions?

I just want to say thank you for putting this together. Thanks for the ad hoc committee, too, that worked on this to make this come to a head. And finally, we've got something in place. So thank you, guys. Appreciate it.

Any other comments, questions? Nope. OK. Seeing none, this is a hearing. So we will go ahead and open this up for public comment. Ms. Dawson.

For public comment, each speaker will have three minutes to address the board. A timer will alert you when 30 seconds remain and again when your time has ended. We'll begin with comments from individuals present in the boardroom, followed by those participating via Zoom. If you're joining via Zoom, please ensure you unmute yourself when called upon. If you're joining by phone, press star nine to raise your hand. If you're on Zoom, use the raise hand feature to indicate your interest in speaking. We ask that you voluntarily state your name for the record before beginning your comments.

Are there any residents in the room that would like to address the board on this particular item?

Seeing none, may we go online? Not taking public comment from online participants. Not taking public comment from Nina Watkins.

Hello, thank you so much. I just wanted to just express our support. My name is Nina Watkins from El Dorado Hills Town Center and also representing the El Dorado Hills Arts and Entertainment Foundation. Just wanted to say, Thank you for your hard work to make those modifications so that we can, you know, get the word out on safety things that might happen during events and upcoming events that will build community. So just, again, just wanted to express my thank you and gratitude.

Thank you.

There's no additional public comment.

Okay. We'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring this back to the board for further deliberation or action.

I think it should be action up to the ad hoc committee to make a motion on this.

You can do that. I thought you guys would want to do it. It's in your district. No, no, it's fine.

You guys got the ball going.

You guys got the ball going. Go ahead. I don't care.

The recommendation from the ad hoc committee is to approve this, which much thanks to staff for working through it.

And I'll second that. There you go. Okay.

There's a motion and a second. Further comments or questions on the motion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye.

Motion passes 5-0. All right.

Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll go ahead and move to item number 31, which is also the planning and building. Ms. Dawson.

Item 31 comes from Planning and Building Department, Affordable Housing Unit, and the Department of Transportation recommending the board, one, receive a presentation on policy B14, traffic impact fee offset program for development with affordable housing units, including a discussion on additional modifications to the policy. Two, recommend the board approve and adopt the discussed provisions and edits to board policy B14. Three, direct staff to return to the board with final edits to the policy. And four, direct staff to work with the chief administrative office to revise the policy B14 procedure manual based on the adopted revised policy.

Great. I'd like to go ahead and welcome Ms. Morris, who's our Senior Administrative Analyst with Planning and Building, and also Mr. Oates, who's a Civil Engineer with Transportation. Welcome, both of you. Thank you.

And good afternoon, Chair Lane and members of the board. Again, I'm Jennifer Morris with the Planning and Building Department. Today, as Chair Lane also stated, I'm with Zach Oates, Senior Civil Engineer with We also have Karen Gardner in the audience and the director. We have Rob Peters here, Chief Deputy Director, as well as we have two members of the task force here today that are also available to answer additional questions. We have Chair Chris Westlake and Jeff Short representing the Building Industry Association. So if we could, Kim, if you could pull up the slide, please. That's the ag lodging. Sorry. I think we already covered that one. I have no information on that. Thank you. That's fine. But while she's pulling that up, I can, the item Zach and I are presenting today is based on a board direction from June, sorry, in May that we took from a meeting that requested the task force to review and provide input on board policy B14, which right now is referenced as the Traffic Impact Mitigation Fee Offset Program. So on June 10th, we held a meeting with our Affordable Housing Task Force to discuss the background on the program, outline any kind of proposed policy changes and highlights and topics that we'd like to review. And they did provide some great feedback. And so today, get right to our agenda, we're going to review the policy background with you guys to give you a little overview of the link to the housing element, the proposed policy changes the task force provided us, and then there were some topics that we did discuss that are unfortunately infeasible by the staff to recommend moving forward, but we'll bring those to light. And then also the discussion topics that are requiring further direction from the board. Next slide. Thank you. So today we are discussing the Board Policy B14, Traffic Impact Mitigation Fee Offset for affordable housing. It was established in 2007. It authorizes up to a million dollars a year into the program, and it is an incentive to help developers with affordable housing units. Let's see. Only for the unincorporated, obviously, areas of the county. We do not offer this to any city, anyone in the city limit jurisdictions. It calls for project cycles. So right now we offer two cycles a year. They open in July and January. And right now we bring those to the board for applicants if we are to refer them to you for approval. They are based, or sorry, applications are required to restrict rent rates and or sale prices for the income qualified tenants, and they are restricted for a minimum number of years right now. I think they're set, a minimum number of years for rental is 20, and I believe it's the same for for sale if we were to have any. County does conduct annual compliance monitoring for all of these units so we are working we work with them whether they have hcd compliance that matches with this we are monitoring those to make sure that they are restricting the income and they're following the guidelines of this specific program so next slide I am not a housing element expert. I'm just going to warn you. We do have people that can answer to this a little better. I believe Rob could if there's any questions regarding this slide. But I will just give you an overview of how this housing element is also linked to our offset program. So the housing goal, HO1, is to provide housing that meets all needs for the existing and future residents of all income groups throughout the county. So we established policy HO1. 1.18 to offer an incentive program for developments of affordable housing units. And then policy HO 1.25 states that the county shall encourage programs that will result in improved levels of service on existing roadways and allow for focus reductions in traffic impact mitigation fees. So those implementation measures that we are working with are HO5, so we are developing and adopting an incentive-based policy through this program, and then HO33 is to reduce traffic impact fees for multifamily mixed-use development for housing with people with disabilities, or like I guess anyone really, income limit-wise, and not limited to people with disabilities, and increasing the protection of multifamily housing groups. So next slide. So these are really high-level basic policy changes that we discussed with the task force. So number one would be to remove the ADU language, so accessory dwelling unit language, which used to be referred to as secondary dwelling units. Fees for affordable secondary toilet units became exempt in 2016 through a major TMP program update, and I don't know if you'd like to add a little.

Yeah, good afternoon, Boards, ACCOs with DOT, as Jen mentioned. So during the 2015 to 2016 major update to the then-TIMFE program, there was a pretty lengthy discussion with staff and the board at the time to decide how to handle these ADUs, secondary dwellings, is what they were referred to at the time. Ultimately, what the county was seeing was that the cost of not solely a result of traffic impact fees at the time, but the cost of building ADU was so expensive that several property owners were just not pulling permits. They weren't doing it the right way legally. And that was creating potential safety issues for future tenants. And so rather than, you know, allow the program to continue as it had been knowing that people were going to try and circumvent the process and to encourage people to come in and get their units permitted to make them safe and livable, they decided to allow all ADUs to move forward utilizing these offset funds to cover their traffic impact at the time mitigation fees. And so that's what this first point here is referring to.

And number two, a long awaited update to this policy would be to change the reference from TIM to actual TIF, which was changed years ago. So it would be traffic impact fee offset. So we get rid of the mitigation portion of that. Number three, clarifying the definition of developing. This is in the policy has been long, not defined very well of what is considered developing. So in discussions with the task force, it was confirmed that they agree that to consider a developer coming through, developing would require that they submit a planning application at least. that gives us the meat that we need to actually look at the project as a whole and to see what they are wanting this offset for. So this would be an eligibility requirement, or sorry, so they would have submitted a planning application and if applicable, it shall be an eligibility requirement to apply for an offset. That way the task force can move forward. We've had a lot of, just so you're aware, a lot of people do come to us with ideas of housing projects, but it's not anything concrete that we can base our decisions off of. And then number four would be adding language to further clarify the definition of a deed restricted property. So we would work on that and throw that in there and then make sure that when we record these items, they are signing a deed restriction against the property as well as an affordable housing agreement. Okay. So I think I'm gonna let you take this slide. Okay.

All right, so a couple other items here on this slide that were discussed with the Affordable Housing Task Force when we met. And these were ideas that were kind of almost a brainstorming type session between staff and the task force. As you might remember from our last major update to the fee program, we utilize grant funds within the TIF program to account for external trips or vehicular trips that both start and end outside the boundaries of the unincorporated west slope. So somebody that's starting down in Amador County and is driving to Auburn, they're touching our county roads, contributing to increased traffic volumes, maybe worsening level of service, but they're not using our roads for any new development that has occurred in the county. So per the mitigation fee act, we can't make the nexus to charge new development for those trips because those trips aren't a result of the new development. So we use grant funds to cover the cost of those trips. We have used grant funds at the direction of the board to provide fee offsets to both residential and non-residential uses across the three zones to bring the cost of those fees down. And then the third thing is our affordable housing offset program that we're talking about today. And that portion of the grant funding is spelled out as $20 million over the planning horizon of the fee program or a million dollars a year. And so one of the topics that came up during that conversation with the task force was, well, why don't we, instead of $20 million, why don't we set aside $30 million or $40 million in grant funding so that we can award more offsets to these affordable housing projects to bring in more of that type of housing? And The very short answer is I think we would love to be able to do that. However, the grant funding horizon at the state level and at the federal level has changed fairly drastically over certainly the last 10 years, if not the last five years. And the amount of funding that the capacity increasing type projects in our TIF program that it is intended to build are just not eligible for the same level of grant funding that they were a decade ago. based on our conversations with the Transportation Commission and the latest data and information they have available. I think the grant funding that we have programmed into the fee program now, which was discussed with the board a year and a half ago or so, is still accurate. And I don't believe that we would be able to increase our grant funding assumptions to justify increasing the amount of offset available. So that speaks to point number one here. There was also an idea to exempt certain types of single family dwellings for certain income levels to have them be exempt from TIF similar to the ADUs. And essentially what that's saying is in the way that ADUs have their TIF traffic impact fees covered by these grant funds, why don't we just as a blanket statement, say we're gonna do that for all single family homes of a certain specified income level. And the problem with that is that at a million dollars a year, that doesn't go very far for single family homes you know, on one side. On the other side, that would quickly get us into a predicament where we could be risking the fully funding of the fee program by blanket approving single family homes from having to contribute to the TIF. There's, again, it gets back to that argument for the first point a little bit of there not being enough grant funding to cover those types of offsets. All right. Yeah, I think we can go to the next slide, Kim.

Thank you.

Okay, so this is the part that we're bringing back to you guys also for discussion. So the first thing we talked about was extending right now the the eligibility for the income level is So we do sometimes do moderate if it's attached to a multifamily. So we have allowed for as long as somebody is living in there, it's usually a manager's unit is at moderate. Everything else is usually about 80% and below that we have done the offset for. So there was discussion about extending the eligibility above the 120% affordability limit. to about 150%, which is something we would have to calculate, but it would help with making efforts towards the workforce housing and the missing middle projects to construct those and make them more affordable for construction. So that was the first topic that we discussed. So I guess, would you like to discuss these as we go through the next, I think there's five? Or would you like us to go through these and we can come back to each one?

Maybe I can just kind of jump in here real quick, Jen. So I think everything we discussed thus far, some of those high-level changes that Jen went through about updating the language around ADUs, the Tim Fee to TIF references from slide five, I think those are the changes that we have brought forward in the redline copy of the policy that's attached to this item today. Relatively... Certainly less controversial than perhaps some of these other suggestions. So we think that those could be brought forward and be updated today. We mentioned those two items that staff deemed maybe not feasible based on the grant funding situations. I think any of these last items starting on this current slide and continuing to the end of the presentation depending on the discussion and direction from the board, implementation of these would have to come back at a later date. We would need a little more time to dive into some of those details and bring that forward. So maybe just keep that in the back of your mind as we move forward with the rest of the presentation here.

So just to be clear, then you're saying that on slide five, you're feeling that those recommendations can all be dealt with today. On slide six, staff isn't recommending that those are feasible for a variety of reasons. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. So I think the way the board is typically operated is we'd like to see you get all the way through the presentation and then we can.

individually highlight if there's issues that we have or we can ask questions okay sounds good thank you yeah okay so we just went over um the one prior to this real quick just discussing eventually if we want to restrict or make projects eligible up to 150 ami um the second topic was extending a hundred percent offset to low income level applicants um right now currently anyone building low income level gets only a 75% offset. So we gave two different tables from inside of our policies. So the chart would change a little bit. So only very low gets 100% offset, which is, I believe, 60% AMI and then 80%.

Yeah. The very low is a range of incomes from 30% to 50% of the average median income.

area median excuse me so the task force did discuss mentioning or moving that shifting that parameter forward to 100 for low um and in that discussion if you felt like anything different could happen for moderate you know we can talk about that too um so slide three or sorry, topic three. This is another discussion by the board, or sorry, the task force. The authority to award the offsets could be delegated either to the CAO or the director of planning and building with the ability to then come back and appeal to the board. So right now, that would make it a streamlined effort to get faster to the award process for these developers. They really rely on this funding to come in early to pencil out a project and to show HCD the numbers. And if the county is already in collaboration with them, it looks better for more awards, for more funding to develop these projects for them as well. So obviously going through our program takes time. For review and approval of the project, it could take a month to six weeks. And we could stop it right there if the board chooses to allow the CAO or the department director to award these projects the offset. If we continue on, obviously, to the board, we add another possible six weeks to that award approval. So that would just streamline the process.

Next slide, please.

So there was discussion also about changing the frequency of the applications. As I mentioned before, we do it in July and January, which is only twice a year. So the task force is recommending that we allow for affordable housing projects to apply year round on a first come first serve basis. But county staff is actually recommending to continue accepting applications twice a year to identify the most effective projects to provide you know the ones that provide the most significant benefit to the community at that time an alternative recommendation would be to increase the number of application cycles each year while keeping the process competitive so there could be other options if we do it every three months or every four months we do have streamlined you know processing coming through so all of the state streamlined ministerial housing projects and they're moving on a much faster timeline now so by allowing the awards to come through quicker it's another alternative to help them and then number five One other item we did discuss was longer deed restrictions. So the current, like I mentioned, program requirement is a minimum of 20-year deed restriction. So moving forward, we'd like to actually line that up if these developers have state and federal funding requirements, whether it's 45 years to deed restrict their property with HCD for for sale units and 55 years for rental units. So we all did agree that these timeframes should align with the state and federal funding. And then we would probably still do the same if it were a market rate developer that actually finally wants to come in and build some affordable units for us too. We would just mimic those requirements.

And so I think...

Okay, so next steps, as Zach was kind of mentioning. So obviously everything we discussed today will incorporate any changes on those first two slides. If there's anything you want to change on those, we can work that in. And then we will return with the final red line version of that policy for final adoption at the next board meeting. And then now we can get into further questions and recommendations.

Okay, questions, comments? Supervisor Turnbull.

Yeah, I just want to bring up, you know, we had that event that was this last Monday, you know, the ribbon cutting for Title 25. I was talking to Mr. Elliott. He said that's the smallest home he ever built, which was 750 square feet. But he is looking at engineering plans to increase it maybe to 1,200 to 1,600 square feet. Is it possible, because he was saying this would be a good process for starter homes, especially for young couples starting out, especially for low income residents. Is this something we could maybe work on a little bit, maybe put in place to kind of help?

Are you talking about making starter homes eligible?

Title 25 is completely different is what it is, but it could still fall under the Title 24. But it requires more inspections, but still something for small homes is, and force these developers to build smaller homes affordable for people could move in because there's a lot of people that can't afford to live here anymore, especially when a home's anywhere from 750,000 to a million dollars. And is it possible that we could work on something like that to make them require that they build a certain amount of these homes so especially it would be affordable for young starter homes for young children starting out in life are seniors too.

We certainly acknowledge the need for that type of housing throughout the County. I would say that within the traffic impact fee program, we do a lot, you know, our $20 million in grant funding, and we can certainly look into increasing the types of housing that might be eligible for this affordable housing. program but i would be hesitant to to state anything definitively right now that uh that that would be uh something that we can for sure do uh without being able to analyze whether or not that's going to affect the long-term viability of the fee program by over committing any sort of grant funding yeah all right i just was asking that question because i think it'd really be great to do something like that to help our young residents being starting out sure

Supervisor Perlin.

Yeah. Well, I agree with Linda Campbell that keeping it in front of the BOS for transparency is probably a good idea on a topic like this that the community is pretty sensitive about, I would say. So that one, I wouldn't support changing that part probably. And then I did email in, because I was full of questions yesterday, huh, Karen? And so Karen forwarded my email to Jennifer. And I asked about how many offsets have been... Because in the table, in the policy, there's... offset for Oh, the table needs to be red line to it still says Tim. Thank you. Yeah, I just I was looking at wait, wait.

So yeah, I didn't see that before. Thank you.

Yeah. But table one, it shows applies to ownership units, which is different than rentals. And we've always seen the rental one. So I just asked the question, how many offsets have been provided for ownership units?

And there haven't been any? There have not to date. So that would be like if Elliott Homes did want to come through with some kind of subdivision and build smaller homes in a community. And that would be for sale units. And that's where they would apply for the TIF offset program through us.

So to do that, then they would have to be deed restricted. Correct. So explain to me how a deed restriction on an owned home works, then, if it's based on income, because you kind of want your people to...

grow their income over the years and correct how's that work um so even with the rental units we do check owners um on the random checks um so we would have them submit yearly certifications and probably with some pay stubs or something because we haven't done it yet so it'd be something i'd have to yeah develop but yeah they would have to submit documentation to the county to prove their income level. I think we do have some programs where at some point if they come out of income restrictions and they are making more, we work with them for a few years to allow them to make some payments to us, but then we give them a deadline to where it either is a balloon payment or they can just pull another loan to cover ours and pay it back to the county, but that does allow us to reloan the money out. So they would assume a loan with a bank or a HELOC or however to cover the cost.

Okay, so it's... When it's implemented, it actually could be like a temporary thing then until their income level.

So for sale units would be deed restricted for 45 years and then we would continue checking them. And they could just, it could be for the full 45 years.

Yeah. But then I was thinking then if that person were to sell. We would be paid back.

would get okay so the county get paid back out of this so on all of our our um like our first time home buyer loans and our um owner occupied rehab loans that we have issued all of those are paid back at when they sell or refinance or they go through foreclosure and there's some money coming back to the county in that sense we do get paid back the funds so wouldn't it mean

What's the right word? I was going to say cooler. That's not a great word. But, you know, our goal is to create the affordable opportunity. So wouldn't it be better to keep the deed restriction and make a new buyer have to be then income qualified? If they do income qualify, we can. So you can do that. Okay. That's what I was trying to figure out because the goal is like to keep it so that, you know, we can keep turning it over for...

For first-time homebuyers, sometimes if a family is in the will of that home, we can also transfer that if they income qualify as well to stay, like to keep the family in the home. So we've done that. I don't think we've done that before, but it's in the program guidelines.

Okay. All right. That's really interesting because I was like, well, we haven't done any, so I'm just not sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I think that's a supervisor for.

So I'm a little confused. The grant funding, is it a million or is it 20 million?

So it is $20 million total. When we do our TIF major updates, our nexus, we look out about 20 years into the future. So we're saying a million dollars a year over 20 years will be $20 million total.

So we currently hold that 20 million or that's coming in?

No. And so, yeah, it is a little complicated. There is not a pot of money where this grant funding lives. The grant funding... is money that we submit projects for, for the different state and federal funding programs. And when a project is successful in obtaining a grant, similar to recently, El Dorado Hills Boulevard interchange project, Ponderosa interchange projects, that grant funding essentially reduces the costs that the County will need to, reduces the amount of TIF dollars that we'll need to spend on those projects. And so essentially it backfills the TIF that we would have received from these affordable housing projects that were awarded the offsets. Essentially lowers the burden of TIF that we need to collect from those projects.

But then are we not treating a deficiency in our roads?

We are treating the deficiency. So when we do our major update, we use the best data that we have available to project how much growth is going to occur, whether it's single family growth, multifamily, all of the non-residential uses, and where that's going to happen. Again, based on the current zoning, and the current land use from the general plan. So we know where that multifamily housing is. And so when we run our traffic models, we use the growth rates that are approved by the board and reviewed by the planning commission to estimate where that, projected growth is going to occur in those multifamily zoned areas. And we forecast with that increased level of traffic based on that growth to identify where we think those roadway deficiencies are gonna be. So as everyone comes in to pull their permits, we're collecting those fees to cover the cost of those projects. Until there is an award for these affordable housing projects, there's no issue. Once there is an award, that creates the need for us to acquire grant money. And to date, we're a year and a half into our major update cycle here from when the last one was approved. We're just about 50% of the grant funding that we estimated over the 20-year cycle. planning horizon for the current nexus. And again, that's not grant money that comes in on an annual basis. So when we say a million dollars a year, we're not getting a million dollars of grant funding a year. We got $15 million for El Dorado Hills Boulevard interchange, 15 million for Ponderosa. So that's a big chunk of change that all comes at once. but the nature of these grant programs is that they come in cycles that happen every five years or six years.

So it's not even allocated per application for a project. It could be correct.

Yeah. The grant money is we, we will identify a funding program that might be applicable for, you know, those interchange projects, for example. And, and so they're on a project by project basis, not a, not a, an affordable housing development project basis.

What happens if the grant funding is discontinued or dries up? What's our plan?

Then Rafael and I will be here before you as soon as we start catching wind that any sort of policy changes might be going on again at the state of the federal level to say, hey, we have these grant funding assumptions in our program, and it looks like they might not be accurate moving forward. We need to revisit the amount of grant funding we assume in the fee program. I don't foresee there being more grant funding available where we could say, hey, we can apply it however you'd like to adjust the fees. It will most likely be they're coming down. Like I mentioned, based on the data that we have now, our conversations with the Transportation Commission, we don't have any data that supports lowering that grant funding right now. As soon as we catch wind of something, though, we would bring that back before the board so that we can make sure we adjust our offset programs, our fee schedule accordingly to keep the fee program fully funded. Every five-year update, yes.

I think I have a couple more questions. So it said, so we currently require 20% of, for affordable projects, 20% have to be deemed affordable? One out of five units. That's the minimum. And so are they, is the developer, are they paying TIF for the remaining four units? They are.

So they're just getting- The offset is only applicable- You're going to discount on that one unit, or that 20%? Yeah, the offset's only applicable to the affordable restricted units.

All right, so the more they build and affordable, the bigger advantage it's going to be for them.

There is a minimum of, they have to at least have five units.

Five units with one. Yeah. Yeah. And then this came in today. Does this program create a contradiction or a conflict with Measure Y and Measure E, the voters?

No, no. Like I was just describing, when we're doing our major updates to the fee program, we're taking that growth, those growth projections that are presented to the board and the planning commission, and we are incorporating that into our model to identify the roadway deficiencies with the traffic from these multifamily projects or single family projects to identify which roadway segments will need to be addressed with a CIP project funded through the TIF program. So regardless of whether or not it's an affordable housing project or it's just a market rate project, we're accounting for the, you know, hesitate to use the word because it's a CEQA thing now, but we're analyzing the impacts, the traffic impacts from those projects on our level of service on our county roads, regardless of being affordable or not.

All right.

Thank you.

Supervisor Vierkamp.

Yeah, so I largely support what we're doing here. I definitely would like to keep it at the Board of Supervisors level, and here's why. We're talking about the majority of our roads are our county roads, but we do have some highways. Highway 49, case in point. We don't have any mitigation at all for a project that is affordable, such as this, short of maybe we could write something in here that says if it's a service level F, which does go back to measure E and measure Y, it's not eligible. Otherwise, we have to sit here and basically discriminate maybe against a developer or that's bringing a worthwhile project, short of we just can't meet the circulation requirements. Our county is unique because of Y and E, as well as having those state highways. So I think somehow there needs to be some language in here that gives the board the discretion to not allow it if it doesn't meet the criteria for circulation. And we certainly have run into that situation on Highway 49, Pleasant Valley Road.

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, well noted. I will say that with some of the recent legislation, some of the streamlined ministerial housing, Senate bills and house pieces of legislation that, the state has decided that we are not allowed to require any sort of subjective analysis, any sort of discretionary review to those projects if they are deemed eligible for those.

Are they saying that we can't provide discretion over this funding? This is where I'm going is with the funding.

Sure, sure. I think it's still in our control until they take it away. The short answer is no. However, With this policy being connected to our housing element and the implementation measures that are in the housing element, we do have to be mindful of just making sure that we are following through on the certified housing element and the measures that are included in there.

Just wait till you see the new Reno requirements. I don't know if you've seen them yet or not, but we are reviewing those with SACOG right now. And it's not getting any more in favor for local jurisdiction. Sure. I don't know how they're going to be met. Yeah. So anyway, I would encourage some language around that that gives us that ability to make that determination.

And the findings would be based on, you know, data that we currently have.

So you're saying... So we can't approve or deny the project because it's ministerial, but we can approve or deny the offset.

Yep, yep, yes.

Yeah.

For now. Yeah, I like that. Until that gets changed.

And I do want to echo what Zach said because I think he's correct. And you've heard this in some of the prior discussions you've had about whether it's this or some other ancillary decision-making processes that are involved in a streamlined project. And even in those contexts, your discretion is not unlimited because they're still – There still is a duty to further that type of fair housing. But I think that what you're suggesting, Supervisor Vierkamp, is certainly something worth considering as perhaps a criteria that's built into the policy to determine whether or not, you know, because there could be circumstances where there are those competing for the same pool of money within this TIF offset. And so a criteria for determining kind of that prioritization or something like that, utilizing data on the condition of the roadways adjacent to the project or other criteria.

Yeah, just as is we're now developing the design guidelines for communities. So far they stand can stand in the way of that discretionary approval if those guidelines are set and are adopted so far right, yeah, yeah, so again I I I think it's worthwhile to consider whether or not that can be built into a policy like this, but I do want to echo Zach's coming out to me it's about the discretion of the board sometimes has on the strictly public safety.

Yeah, especially when some of these houses don't get anything.

And just to kind of play devil's advocate on that, you know, we heard that it takes four to six weeks for an application to kind of get through the process. And then if it has to go to the Board of Supervisors, that adds an additional four to six weeks to the project. And time is money. And we seem to spend a lot of time trying to get some of these approved. So I would feel very comfortable with what County Council just mentioned, which is bake that into the list of requirements that they have to meet, but give either the CAO or the planning director the ability to be able to approve those. The appeals can come before the board. if there is an appeal. The question I have to ask is really, really basic, and that is to staff, has there been an analysis as to whether or not we even think that this program is working?

I don't know if it's actually been a full analysis, but...

I know most everybody takes advantage of it if they're doing a project, but whether it's- I know it's- Rob Peters with planning and building, working in collaboration with Zach and Jen and the Affordable Housing Task Force. We're looking at all sorts of data points and strategies and incentives and things that we can look at. I think most recently we have seen an uptick in the use of these funds, but they've been largely- a result of state streamlined projects that have been come through to the county. So I would say in the last few years, we've seen the use of these funds on projects that are being delivered. But as Supervisor Verkamp identified, some folks aren't necessarily happy with the project or the uh our ability to analyze those outside of objective standards but i do i would say while over 20 years you don't see 20 years being expended there's some offset for the adus but i would say in the last few years particularly after sb 35 and and other streamlined projects or programs became in place at the state level we've seen an increase in these types of projects they're generally not one unit out of a five unit project they're generally the whole

you know apartment complex or that sort of thing yeah and rob went because i was trying to find um we get summaries i think we get an annual summer to be summary and i was trying to look through my files and the last one i found was i think from 2023 three or something. But I mean, it shows the whole breakdown of the list of ADUs, apartment building, like, okay, program total to date, whatever the date is of the one I'm looking at, program total to date, amount of money awarded has been $6,670,000, total qualified units, 534, and then it says 32 second dwelling units. So I think this was the 2023 one. And do we get this annually? So maybe if you could just send one of these out to all of us so we can kind of refresh our minds that we have these reports, you know.

So that was usually attached to the awards going before the board. Okay. And at some point we were directed not to attach those, but gave a summary just within the legislature text. Also a little bit with my admin finance background. I did a full reconciliation of it and trued up the numbers. So we have actually, between 2008 and 2016, before the ADUs were exempt, I guess, from the program from having to apply for the offset, we had 29 ADUs, and that was a total of 582,000 that are in the program that are deed-restricted ADUs that we still monitor, unless they're, I think they were deed-restricted between 10 and 15 years, depending on the size of the program. dwelling um between 2008 and 2026 so present we've actually have 374 units on six properties in the county that have provided homes for people and that has amounted to 5.1 million okay over the last 18 years Okay. So we have a little bit time, like two-ish years left in this program. Right.

And I just think that that would be good data for us to see. So we can do like a report out. Yeah.

Yeah.

And I don't know if that would be, since we're not doing with project, which actually giving us a report like this with project probably isn't a good idea. But maybe when we have the TIF fee annual update or CIP annual or whatever, we have all these annual updates regarding TIF. It would probably give us one of these at the same time. just so that everybody gets a refresher because we don't get into this very often which is probably good but um you know so we get a refresher on what the numbers really are because otherwise you know to your point chair how would we know if the program's doing anything or not if we don't get these reports so and there have been a lot of units qualified through the program

You know one of the biggest things that frustrates me is is when certain projects that meet the criteria there turned down and we had a particular project appeal was denied. But what bugs me and then this state goes in there and changes the policy of the law whatever so they can so this is really frustrating, especially for our County what we're dealing with right now.

Other questions or comments. Okay, there's a number of recommended changes before us. As Mr. Oates recapped, let's see, starting on page five, staff is recommending, and it's noted in the red line version that we Remove the ADU language. We update references of TIM, V2, TIF. We clarify the definition of developing and add language referencing further clarification on deed restrictions. Does anybody, the staff is recommending all four of those. Does anybody have any questions or concerns regarding those? Not those ones. And then on page six of the presentation, staff talked about why we're really not in a position right now to increase the amount of grant funding beyond the 20 million. And they're also not recommending that we exempt single family dwellings of certain income levels to be exempt from TIF and ADUs. Any questions, comments, concerns on that? Okay. And then on page seven, extend eligibility to income levels above moderate, which is 120% of average median income. This is where, well, So I guess I'm currently at 150 and they're recommending it go.

It's at 120.

So we're, it's at 120.

You don't have to make like a hundred percent decision on these right now, but if you want us to explore the next five slides, it's a yes or no, or I don't agree today at all. Don't look into it. So, but yes, this first one would be going from 120% AMI to increasing it to 150.

And when we spoke about this with the task force, the thought behind this point was that that 120 to 150% AMI is still that workforce housing segment of the population. So it would expand the types of projects for workforce housing folks to be more eligible for this program, essentially.

Gotcha. And that's kind of also what you're trying to do on the next page. eight with the proposed offset table by eliminating very low. and instead including the 100% for low, it doesn't eliminate very low, it expands those that qualify.

Yeah, it's granting more offset to anything low.

So residents making up to 80% of the AMI would be eligible for, or excuse me, units restricted for incomes up to 80% of the AMI would be eligible for 100% offset of the TIF for a project. But that same goal in mind, yeah.

And so are you just looking for on those two issues, are you just looking for direction to take a look at those? Or are you looking for us to thumbs up, thumbs down? I mean...

I don't know how much we would be able to provide looking into them further, we could certainly try and estimate how many types of projects that you know that might entice to come in and apply for the program I would say that projects with. increasing the applicability of the program to more projects could result in a more competitive process where we might actually see allocations exceeding our million dollar per year allowances. And so that's just something to keep in mind that as more projects become eligible, we might see more apply, which could make that the process trying to get that million dollars more competitive essentially.

So yeah, I said to Zach's point, I think like, yeah, one and two might need a little more dialing in, but we can bring it back at a later date. Okay. Discuss it and show you what we found and see if that's something you guys want to make changes on or not.

Okay. And then the final one on here is the one regarding Delegating award authority to either the CAO or the Planning and Building Director with appeals going to the Board of Supervisors.

No, I just don't think we should do that.

Could they go to the Planning Commission? Is that even an option?

The way the policy is currently drafted is that there's a committee made up of members of different departments that review the applications and provide a scoring or a ranking so that if there are multiple applications, there's some sort of ranking that's forwarded to the CAO's office who makes a recommendation to your board for approval. So the way the policy was originally drafted was just for the board to make the final determination. I might have to defer to County Council or the CAO as to whether or not the Planning Commission could be given that authority.

I don't see a reason why they couldn't, but it is perhaps a little bit outside the typical scope of the Planning Commission's responsibilities, though this is, of course, has an effect on development of land. It's not directly related, as we've discussed before. And I think that's why it has landed with the board previously is that it's largely a financial matter.

Yeah.

Usually it's an administrative process to some degree, but this one's just a little bit more complicated.

Let's let Supervisor Farrell.

I'm fine with it.

Yeah. I would also just say from a practical standpoint, I believe that the lead time for getting items onto the planning commission's agenda is actually longer than it is for the board.

That would make it a lot longer. I'm fine with it coming to us.

OK.

Yeah, and I'll be in the minority on that one. I would definitely support this being more streamlined and more administrative because I think it's an efficiency matter, and I also think it takes away the political bias that sometimes we run into. So I'm going to be in the minority on that one. Yeah. change the frequency of applications from two times a year. Staff is recommending that we continue accepting applications twice a year.

Makes sense.

So stick with that, yeah.

You get them, you batch them and you rate them and...

yeah if we get away from that they're just gonna be coming in sure and again and i'm sure the members of the task force would will probably add on to uh hopefully not the words i'm putting in their mouths but from my notes and recollections the idea was again to streamline the the process of of getting these projects these funds as quickly as possible uh going through the policy the the original intent was to have it be a somewhat competitive process based on the low number of projects that have applied over the last 20 years almost now. That hasn't quite happened, but as we see an increase in the number of applications that come in, we believe that it still would be in line with the original intent of the program to keep it a competitive process. And we could still, we could expand it to you. I'm sorry. Sorry.

Like three times a year, three times a year or quarterly, but it's a little more often just because of the streamline, um, projects getting through the door and out the door very quickly now. So there's that option too. So, so we can give it twice a year or as is, or three times a year or two.

Okay. Okay.

You're also recommending that longer deed restrictions that marry up more with the state and federal funding requirements of 45 or 55 years.

Yeah.

As opposed to what we're currently doing, which is 20.

It's a minimum of 20, but as years have gone on, we've done a few recently where we have mirrored their HCD funding awards as well. So those are all kind of getting executed about the same time within a year or so of each other. So we've made it match that way. When we're monitoring those, we're also monitoring the TIF at the same time. Makes sense.

We've had a project where that's created a point of confusion where they have assumed that our policy says a 20-year restriction. They've also been one of the streamlined projects that required a more strict longer-term restriction which supersedes our 20 years. So this would just make it a little more straightforward and eliminate that point of confusion.

Makes sense. Okay. Anything else you need from us?

I think that covers it.

Okay. Do you need formal direction? We kind of went through those one at a time. Are you good with the...

As long as you guys are okay saying yes, go with that slide five, which I believe is all in the board direction, then we will bring this back on consent with, just got to fix that word, Tim, in that chart, and then should be good to go. And you'll disapprove just these proposed policy changes, one through four, that we already discussed in the very beginning. Perfect.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good job. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, that could bring us to board member updates. Yeah. Sorry, do you? That's what I was asking.

I think the board decided they were just going to rely upon the informal direction that was just provided. And I do realize, I think the agenda item is drafted as if the board would be approving the revisions to the policy. And I think staff made clear that the board was not taking action to formally approve the revised policy today. Is that correct?

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Okay. We'll move to board member updates. Are there any supervisors that would like to report out on this particular item at this time?

I don't know.

Ms. Parlin.

Yeah. The only thing I really think that the board would be interested in knowing is that yesterday, actually, the SOFAR collaborative steering committee had our regular monthly virtual meeting. And there are going to be changes probably. It was announced yesterday. There's going to be some changes in probably, this is all just new and happening, so that's why I keep saying likely, probably. But we're going to probably be restructuring so far to better integrate and align with all the other partners and collaboratives. in El Dorado County and the watershed as a whole, because our watershed goes beyond just our county. So it's a lot for everybody to get our head around. It just happened and was announced yesterday at our steering committee meeting. I believe we decided not to have the September 2nd collaborative meeting that I had originally told you we were going to have. I think that is now going to be morphed into the next steering committee meeting so we can kind of talk through it. It was a little fresh for everybody and a little bit raw, to be honest. And so folks needed some time to get their head around it and we're gonna work on what this will look like. So stay tuned, but I just thought you might hear some rumblings about it and didn't want anybody caught off guard. Thank you for that. Any other updates?

Yeah, I'll just go on. I just want to comment on the ribbon cutting August 18th, because that's when the fire went through Grizzly Flat, Caldor Fire. And two of the residents received the Title 25 homes, Bob Myers and Randy Ert. So a special thanks also to HomeAid Sacramento, Elliott Homes, USA Properties Fund Incorporated, and NextCrafted Incorporated for their support and dedication to rebuilding the community event. It was well attended by many community members, including Congressman Kevin Kiley, Assemblyman Heather Hadwick's assistant, and Maryse Averano-Gills' assistant, too. So it was a great event, and we're going to have a ribbon-cutting for the next four soon.

That's all I have for right now.

What am I, chopped liver? Oh, yeah, and Lori was there. Sorry.

And what about our CAO?

And our CAO. And then Brian's assistant, too. Sorry.

Hi, Angelique was there. I mean, we were all there for you.

A lot of people there. Rafael was there. There was a lot of county staff. So anyway, David didn't show up.

No.

The sheriff was there. You had a lot of folks there.

Yeah, there was a lot of people there. It was a lot of support and stuff. And gosh, it was unbelievable. There was not enough seating for everybody. Everybody was standing. And there must have been around maybe 152, close to that many people there. So it was amazing turnout. And I just want to thank everyone. Sorry about that.

Okay. Are there other reports by supervisors? Just one quick one.

On behalf of the El Dorado County Water Agency, I attended the Urban Water Institute workshop down in San Diego. And I think for the first time in years, the Mountain County's Water Agency played a large hand in it and actually was one of the presenters on Friday. I think in the future we'll be even more integrated because what... Where the water starts is the headwaters, and we're going to be talking about headwaters, watershed, and so forth. But it was a great opportunity. They had some great speakers and great seminars. And I'll bring back, I got all my notes, so I'll bring back a couple of really good items that came out of there. But there was some good stuff, and it was a great, great opportunity.

Can I just say that thank you for representing. I really wanted to go because I think that Mountain County, we've really been pushing hard to make that north-south connection and to see it come to fruition is so amazing i mean this is where water needs to go as a statewide so so thank you for being there i was so bummed i couldn't go yeah it was well received so i thought it was and that was great they did awesome they did a really good job putting it together very good

Madam CAO, do you have an update for us?

Sure, just quickly. You'll have a short break from board meetings, not from work. Next meeting is September 15th. That'll mainly be commission and committee reports. And just want to remind everyone that the West Slope Employee Appreciation Barbecue is on September 10th. And if anybody wants to sign up to cook, please let HR know by the 4th.

Well, we have three people so far already done.

Brian took all the spots.

Yep.

All right, we're going to go ahead and recess back into closed session. County Council, do you expect that we might have a report out?

I do not, Madam Chair.

Okay, so we'll go ahead and recess into closed session and we will adjourn at the end of closed session.