Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'm calling to order the March 19th, 2026 meeting of the Planning Commission in the town of Fairfax, which is being held in person at the Fairfax Women's Club. This meeting is also being held virtually on Zoom and broadcast on Channel 27 and 99 and live streamed on the town's website. Can we have a roll call, please? Kelly?

Here.

Beffer?

Here.

Jansen?

Here.

Petrone absent. Newton? Here. Chair Swift? Here.

OK, next is the approval of the agenda. Does anyone have any changes they'd like to request on the agenda? If not, can we have a motion?

Motion to approve, Virginia.

Second.

Kelly?

Aye.

Pfeffer?

Yes.

Jansen?

Aye.

Newton? Aye. Chair Swift? Yes.

Okay, the meeting protocol.

Could I ask you to just remind people that item number three has been...

That now. Okay.

So meeting protocol, the chair shall maintain order at the meeting in accordance with Robert's rules of order. And the planning commission has responsibility to be a model of respectful behavior in order to encourage community participation and citizen input at planning commission meetings. The planning commission and the audience are expected to refrain from using profane language. and or ridiculing the character or motive of planning commission members staff or members of the public and to maintain the standards of tolerance and civility All interested persons are invited to participate in public hearings. In order to give all interested persons an opportunity to be heard and to ensure the presentation of all points of view, members of the audience should limit their presentation to three minutes, provide their comments by email as described in the agenda, state their view, and concern succinctly and submit any new documents to the planning staff first, directly or via email at planning at townoffairfax.org to be entered into the record. So now we're going to have public comments on non-agenda items. Anyone who wishes to address the Planning Commission on matters not on the agenda but within the jurisdiction of the Planning Commission must do so by email, in person, or via Zoom. Presentations will be limited to three minutes or as otherwise established by the Planning Commission chair. So opening public comments.

Mark Bell, Fairfax. As I mentioned at the last planning commission meeting, I know an attorney who will actually work for the people of the town. I received a letter from him that I forwarded on to you, and I'll just read a portion of it. From the attorney, I can offer you my initial assessment and propose a deeper dive, and if desired by the town, an alternative and less extreme revision to the town code. With my knowledge of the law and this town, I offer my initial critique of the town's February 19th staff report and its analysis and inferences from the California Court of Appeals case, Park at Cross Creek versus the City of Malibu 2017. The staff report over relies on Malibu to eviscerate a longstanding town ordinance that has served as a cornerstone to Fairfax community and culture. There are two apparent errors in the town's interpretation of Malibu. First, the staff report implies that the existing Fairfax conditional use permit requirement is similar to that in the Malibu case and therefore entirely unlawful, yet without an explanation as to how. In Malibu, the stated problem with the CUP provision was only the non-transferability of the CUP. This component does not exist in the Fairfax ordinance. Second, the proposed amendments to the formula business ordinance are unnecessarily broad in creating a ministerial approval process i.e a rubber stamp for formula businesses this is not required by malibu and does not comport with the town code or general public agency practice in california it would be unconventional for any town to ministerially approve novel and new uses with a high degree of impact on the community landscape and adjacent land uses Moreover, precedent in land use carries significant legal weight in the land use and local legislative policy context. For every one formula business or publicly traded macro chain store permitted, a defensible justification for more is created. Likewise, the town will not be able to reduce the number of permitted formula businesses in town. Considering corporations do not die and leases are often 30 years or more. In other words, you cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube. Permitting some formula businesses a regional change is achievable without these proposed amendments. My firm and I are prepared to further assess to what extent Malibu obligates the town to amend its code, if at all, and if desired, draft alternative amendments that comply with Malibu and the rule of the Planning Commission and Town Council. You can contact me by phone or email. My rate is approximately $400 an hour, likely negotiable considering the personal relationship I have with the town of Fairfax. I estimate five hours to prepare these materials. The only response that I received was from Council Member Blash, who told me that the attorney fee was exorbitant. And when I asked her to give me the cost of what was already proposed by the town attorney, by her contacting the specialist at BBK, and by all that she wrote out, I was told that we need to have a civil conversation, to which I replied a civil conversation would be answering my question, how much have you already spent? Thank you.

Anyone else in the room for public comments? Anyone on Zoom?

Correct. I see no hands on Zoom. OK. No problem.

I'm going to close public comments on non-agendized items. And we'll have a staff report on our first item, please.

Okay, so this project is actually occurring on a vacant parcel. The parcel number is 003-031-066, but it's for a parking structure to serve the house across the street at 118 Tamalpais. So the applicant's proposing to demolish the existing one-car carport to rebuild an expanded two-car carport across the street from his house at 118 Tamil Pias on an easement that was established for parking purposes to serve 118 and 124 Tamil Pias Road in the late 1970s. The project requires the approval of a conditional use permit, a rear yard, minimum side yard, and combined side yard setback variance, a tree removal permit, and a height variance. 118 Tamalpais is a very steep upslope and trying to provide parking on the same site as that house would be very difficult. One of the reasons these parking easements were created across the street in the first place was because of the difficulties of building parking on site. The Fairfax Tree Committee reviewed the proposal and the tree removal recommendation application for the project back in 25 and recommended that the Planning Commission approve the requested tree removal permit to accommodate the proposed construction. staff was able to suggest findings for the approval of all the required discretionary permits and therefore we're recommending that you approve resolution 2026-07 setting forth the findings and the conditions for the project approval we have a couple of corrections to the staff report in the reso i have to make sure i have the right staff report here We wanted to add on page two, a paragraph above the last paragraph that says town code section 17.080.060 B limits accessory structures, such as carports to 15 feet in height. So the 27 foot tall carport necessitated by the steepness of the property slope requires the approval of a height variance. We left any description about why the height variance was required. And then in the resolution, Under the SEC after the second whereas it should read march 19 2026 not march 19 2025 and then under the third whereas we added the tree permit tree removal permit after the height variance because we forgot to list it. And then on page three we're adding a sub a sub title tree removal permit. The Planning Commission is approving the requested tree removal permit based on the tree committee recommendation for approval at their August 25th, 2025 tree committee meeting. And then in the paragraph after the now therefore be it resolved on page six, we forgot to put in the height variance. So we're adding that after the side yard setback variances and the minimum height variance for accessory structures and the tree removal permit. And that would conclude our report.

Thank you. Do any commissioners have questions for staff?

Go ahead. Yeah, I do. So there's no table here with what is required on the site and what is allowed and what is proposed. We can defer it from the text, but it seems to be missing on page.

Yeah, we didn't include a table because we have only been doing that for... like additions to houses or houses. We've never done it on a vacant site with parking structures, but we can in the future if that's something you wanted to request.

Yeah, I think it makes it easy to read. Yeah. Okay. So you're calling it a vacant parcel.

Yeah.

My understanding is that it's an easement, so it's not a parcel by itself. It's an easement on the larger parcel that has the house and the two-car. That's correct. Correct. So it's not an empty parcel.

Yeah, that's correct. There's two parking structures on it.

All right. Yeah.

I should have said it has no residence on it. That's what I should have said.

Right. Well, it does because it's still part of the same. So it's a big parcel which has – or it's a parcel with a house on it and a –

No, the parcel has no house on it. Downslope? You approved a new house a couple of years ago, which you might be remembering, but he never followed through and got his building permit.

So it still doesn't have a house. So the two-car carport does not serve a house. Not that house, but somewhere else. It's across the street.

It's, I think, one of the more unique situations.

No, it is. I'm very confused. I have a couple of questions regarding all that. So the easement, that happens a lot in Fairfax where you have the steep hill, so there's an easement to partially build adjacent to the road. That's what we are talking about. No, I don't think so, because...

the property line of the parcel goes to the edge of the road yes that's right sometimes most parking structures on the downslope you do have to approve an encroachment permit because the road is more in the center of the road but this portion of tamil pious is pushed to one side of the right-of-way easement for probably because it was the easiest way to build it for whatever reason okay so what what does the easement do i'm not i'm looking at the property so because both so

The easement is parallel to the roadway, which is into the parcel, and then it's bifurcated in two parts.

Correct.

What does that easement do?

The easement language was created by the owner of 63 Tamil Pias, who also owned the vacant site back in the 70s. And he created and granted the easement to the houses across the street so that they could build parking.

Okay, yeah, so it is an easement, a voluntary easement by a property owner to other properties.

Correct.

Right. Are those easements revocable?

I'm not an attorney, but the way it's written is pretty standard. It seems like it's a permanent easement that runs with the land, but I'm not an attorney.

Right, so there's no expiration time, no revocability. That's very unusual. Okay.

I mean... I guess if you got a new owner that wanted to try to revoke it, they could go to court or something.

Yeah. I'll have to think about this for a second so I see there's some other questions there. Thank you.

Does the square footage of this new structure affect the floor area ratio of the larger site? So would it limit the amount that can be built on the larger site?

No. So floor area ratio, 500 square feet of any kind of garage or carport space is exempt from counting towards floor area or lot coverage. So it wouldn't affect the development of the vacant site going forward. The only thing it's going to do is it's going to affect the front rear setback.

But isn't there going to be more built now?

Eventually, I think someone will come in to build on this. The person that got the previous approval never followed through by getting a building permit, and his planning approvals have expired.

So the total amount of parking is still under 500 square feet?

I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. But they have the other parking deck that's not quite. I don't know. You know what? I would refer that to our town attorney because the parking that's there is not going to be for the house on that site. It's an easement that was created in the 70s permanently for houses across the street that don't have any parking or any real ability to build it.

I thought when we reviewed the house that was proposed down the hill, we considered that carport in the lot coverage. So this would now cover more area.

It would, yeah.

Will that impact what can be built down the hill?

That's correct. Well, it depends. If they wanted to ask for a variance of the lot coverage, hopefully someone going for a planning commission would be reasonable understanding that the parking isn't for their property. I mean...

You know what I mean?

Whoever owned it in the 70s was trying to do a good thing, right? Yeah.

A quick follow-up on that. The carport is 20 by 20. That's 400 square feet. If you build two, you have 800 square feet.

Yeah, so 300 square feet would...

Exceeds the FAR, which is not listed here. So that would be another variance.

But it's not exceeding it now because there's no house here.

True.

It only gets added to a house if someone comes in again to try to build on it on the vacant site.

Okay.

I know.

Yeah, it's complicated. So then the applicant is the property owner.

The applicant is the person at 118 Tamalpais. Yes. He's the owner of the house that has no parking. Well, I take that back. He has parking on the easement across the street that was established in the 70s, a one-car parking deck. And then the other neighbor has the parking on the other parking deck.

Yeah, so I'm not asking who is building it, but I presume that the owner would need to grant permission.

The owner knows that this application has been filed.

Yeah, basically when the easement was, I mean, basically the easement is an ownership right. So the person that owns the easement essentially owns that portion of that property for all intents and purposes. So they are entitled to do this project. And I mean, the property owner could protest, but then we'd have to go back to 1973 and in a time machine and not sign the documents and not turn over that development rights for that portion of the property. Because once they signed over that easement, they lost their ability to tell them no. So they're entitled to develop the parking deck without really any permission from the underlying property owner.

Right, right. That's why I was asking if, right, easements like this usually have expiration dates or conditions like these.

And so if they're none, then that's... No, I mean, this is an older easement, you know. I mean, nowadays they might look a lot different, but it's...

Right, understood. Complicated. Then... A few more. Sorry, but I'm really trying to understand. It's a complicated thing. Under the suggested findings to follow the town code, item number one. So that is special circumstances applicable to the property.

Are you in the staff report?

I'm in the staff report on page five.

You know, these are just suggestions. So you don't have to go with them. You can change them. Correct.

I have a question about it.

Okay, five.

So page five suggests the findings and then item number one at the bottom of the page. Then the argument is about the slope. I don't understand why the slope. Oh, the slope is for the height of the building. Okay, I get it. Sorry. Okay. I understand. Okay. Thank you.

I know it's really weird because the variance, the easement is for the house across the street, the variance being granted for someone else's property.

It's very strange. Yes.

Well, and to that point, there's, there's two easements there, correct? The other one is for 124 Tamalpais.

So what I've seen of the documents and everything, it just seems to call out a strip along the, along the rear of that property, right? For the two properties. So it's not like there's separate easements created for each house. It's just one strip. And I guess they're supposed to fight it out and figure out who gets the most parking.

Well, according to the documents that we have, it is in two parts. And one part is assigned to a single property number, not two.

Well, you'll see it shown both ways, right? But the document that records it just describes the strip. So I... Because it was done in the 70s, and the records aren't really, really clear, you know, from the 70s. So the recorded document at the county exists, though, that created the easement, right, and said that it's for parking for the properties. Right.

Yeah, no, it's on the record of survey. It says it's an easement, and then it assigns it to a single parcel number.

Because I believe, if I'm remembering correctly, the property owner of 124, like their family years ago, actually owned the whole piece of property that has 118, 124, and 120, which is the house that's filled with mud and has been vacant for years. So that one family then ended up dividing it up and creating houses. So that may be why it's listed under one ownership, but...

If I might. Linda, we have a document in the packet, sheet A0.1. It's kind of towards the end of the page 28 of 34. Yeah, A0.1. Okay. And if you could look at this and help me understand what we're talking about. On the north side of Tamalpais are the two easement properties, both connected to 67. One calling out the owner, John Shaw, who's the owner of, on record as the applicant here. The other one associated with, oh, my glasses, 124, indicating the owners are George and Martha Molly Praxerin. Do you see that?

Yes.

Okay. So what we're talking about is those two squares below 67 Tamalpais as the easements, correct? Yes. Correct. And then the owner, John Shaw, identified as the owner under 118 is the smaller. Correct. And then the larger one is for 124 Tamalpais. Right. So that's the way those are breaking out. Right. And the one we're talking about tonight is the one indicating the owner's John Shaw, the smaller of the two.

Okay.

Yes.

Any other questions for staff? Is the applicant here? No. OK. I'm going to open it up for public comments. Are there any public comments in the room on this application? Seeing none, any on Zoom? I see no hands on Zoom chair. OK, I'm going to close public comments and bring it back to the Planning Commission for discussion. And a possible motion.

And I just want to.

confirm sorry i do have another question for staff i don't see on the drawings dimensions from the adjacent building do you mean from the neighboring house or you mean from the other carport i'm sorry the carport yeah it's really close i'd say it's like a foot away but i mean it is drawn to scale you want me to check on the scale

Is there an assumed property line between the two easements?

So that's where it's not. They're not properties. You know what I mean? They're easements. And so the setback that you're considering is going to be from the proposed widened carport and then the other side of the other carport to the other side property line. And they do need variances, right? Right.

Yeah. So I have a couple of comments. Um, I'm extremely familiar with the property. I used to walk by it, drive by it every single day. Um, it's a wonderful portion of the hill. The parking is horrendous there. Uh, the people that enjoy the Liberty to park here have to walk up about four flights of stairs to get to their house across the street. So it's, you know, it's probably a wonderful thing that they have an easement to park across the street. Um, the walk up that Hill is wonderful because of all the green space around you. And this will obviously take away a bunch of that green space, uh, for the neighborhood. Um, I wish that, uh, it wasn't going to be, it, um, it wasn't going to take away a lot of that green. And it seems like there, there is a, you know, we, we have setbacks for a couple of reasons. We, we had the side yard setbacks to keep some green space between buildings to create view corridors, which is exactly what I'm lamenting. And also safety of just fire spread between, you know, potentially a carport that if a, car caught on fire with an electric car, and it's going to obviously burn right next door to it pretty easily. So I just wanted to call our commission's attention to those things, though I generally support the project.

Yeah, I'm struggling with it. I understand how important it is, and I can see the reasons to do this. The concern I have is that this mix up between easement and property. So the current condition, even if you had the proposed house that was built down there, as shown on that sheet that we were looking at, that would basically comply with the site setbacks. So if you don't change anything, the property total has a house and one larger and one smaller carpet, arguably maybe just over 500 square feet. So if you apply your zoning regulations, they apply to a property. That's why it gets complicated. Does it apply to a property or does it apply to a separate easement?

It applies to the property and... I would hope that a solution for houses that were built when people were taking horses and wagons to their summer homes would not be used by a future commission to somehow penalize someone trying to build a house down on the lower part of Tamalpais, which is the only place it can be located at now. It's an unusual situation because of the way the properties were developed so long ago and the change of human lifestyles, you know?

Yeah, no, understood. No, the house wouldn't be penalized. But the thing is, we need to have an argument why it's okay to build up to one foot of a property line of a neighboring property. That's the question. And that's what I'm struggling with. Because if you look at the property, there is no hardship. That's a business decision if you want to make an easement. arguably done way back, because otherwise, right, you could make an easement with your neighbor, and it gets a little strange. That's what I'm struggling with. So I find it hard to make a decision on it. That's why I'm bringing it to the Commission. And I want to see if other Commissioners have opinions about that. There has to be a reason why it is okay, in this case, to build up to a foot away from the property line, whereas the property at large doesn't need that. That's a difficulty. I'll take a minute on that, see if anybody had any thoughts.

So my thinking on this is that easements were created and were recorded, and those easements identified that particular area of that parcel. So within those easements, it was already recognized for parking, and probably only for parking. It may say in those easements that it's specifically for parking, and they can't do anything else with it. It already, within that, addressed that it was going to go up to the road. There was gonna be setback issues. So all we're doing now is widening, my understanding is the easement on the left, we're widening that in essence to, if you look at the property, there's a level place that has their garbage Cans on there, there's a water meter, there's a utility pole. My understanding looking at the plans is that it's going to be widened to where the left side of that platform is that they're already using for their garbage. And it's not going to go beyond that. facing down any further than what is already there. It's just widening that from the one space to be able to take in two cars. And it looks like from the plans that the height isn't really changing at all. So there is an easement already. It already covers That whole width, from my perspective, I don't see a concern with granting these so that they can have it widened for two cars, just like the one on the right is.

I just wanted to clarify that the plan isn't to widen the easement. The easement itself is for a larger portion, and so they're just trying to build on more of the easement.

To the end of the easement on the left side.

And then the way I see it is that there's an easement to build parking there, and so necessarily I understand that the town code variance requirements here are you know, it's hard to meet both of those and enjoy the use of the easement at the same time. And, you know, for the reason why it has to be so close to the road in the setback, I guess it's because that's where the easement is located on the property. You know, the easement isn't further away from the property line. It's right abutting the road and there's a limit for how deep it can go. You know, I think that's, That makes sense to me. The only thing that I would have had a question about is the tree removal, but we have the tree committee already weighing in on that.

And the tree committee, as with other applications that we've seen, theirs isn't an approval. It's a recommendation to the Planning Commission because this is coming to the Planning Commission as opposed to just other tree permits that are outside of that. Yeah.

Yeah, I think the photos that we have attached in the application show the garbage cans that Chair was referencing. And so each of those three photos, I think, show us where the tree removal and the extension will be. And sort of coming out from that area where the garbage cans are, which you can see sort of in the second photograph. And so with the approval of the tree committee, I think they conditioned their approval on the approval of the project. And yeah, it doesn't, it does not look unreasonable to me.

So with, go ahead.

I was just going to say, I was ready to make a motion unless we, I mean, I don't want to cut Commissioner Jansen or anybody else short if you want to discuss more.

No, it's a complicated thing, I think. And so just a quick response, right? It's not the height, the hill that's clear, the easement is clear, it's close to the road is clear. The only thing that was concerning to me is to make a finding why it is okay to violate the setbacks, because that needs a reason. I did not have that reason. But I think... the way we could make this work is if the reason is, and I think you mentioned that Commissioner Pfeffer, because the easement is not revocable, it becomes a part of the parcel that is not able to be used otherwise. So both the easement holder would not be able to do something with it, and the property owner would not be able to undo the easement. and therefore it's a hardship. That's something I could hang my hat on. But that is a dicey thing there. That's a very dicey thing.

No, I get your point. And the reason, one, on the finding on the rear setback variance, instead of saying the steep slope and the narrow width are the issue, it's more the easement is built into the the setback requirement in there. You can't move the easement. The easement exists. And so you can only develop in the setback itself.

So would you recommend looking at that paragraph one after the rear setback variance in the resolution on page two? where it references the steep slope and narrow width of the property, where the carport replacement is proposed, combined with the irrevocable nature of the easement itself, are the special site conditions?

Sounds good to staff.

Yeah, I was rereading it, and Commissioner Newton was reading faster than I could find the right page, so I had to catch up there for a second. So what you're saying is in this item one there, right, it basically can be very simple, right? The steep slope and the narrow width of property plus the, and then it was, I think, the non-revocable easement. Right. make it impossible to do it any other way. That's the way the rest of the census can remain. Yeah, that sounds good. I think that's an important piece. Thank you.

Then I'll make a motion, if that's okay, to approve resolution number 202607, a resolution of the Fairfax Planning Commission approving application number 2603 for a conditional use permit, minimum rear yard setback variance, and minimum and combined side yard setback variance, a height variance, and a tree removal permit. to construct a two-car carport on assessor's parcel number 001-12303 across the street and north of the house. It will serve at 118 Tamalpais Road. With the changes mentioned by staff during the presentation of this item and the language the Planning Commission just discussed, under the rear setback variance, minimum side yard setback variance, combined side yard setback variance, and accessory structure height variance in paragraph 1.

We have a second?

I'll second.

There we go. Kelly?

Aye.

Pfeffer? Yes. Jansen?

Aye.

Newton?

Yes.

Chair Swift?

Yes. So thank you. There is a 10-day appeal process for this application, and information on that process can be received from the Planning Commission. Thank you. So we're going to go on to item number two.

Okay, this project is for the construction of a 917 square foot, two story, two bedroom, two bathroom, laundry room, study room, and meditation room addition to an existing 1,316 square foot, one story residence with an existing 312 square foot garage. The addition will reach a maximum of 21 feet in height, which is less than the permitted 28.5 feet in height in this RS-6 zone district. While the addition will result in the house being one of the largest in the immediate neighborhood, it will be similar to the house at 75 Canyon Road that is 2,223 square feet in size and maintains an FAR of 0.24. With the addition to the 80 Canyon Road property, it will have an FAR of 0.22, which is well below the permitted FAR of 0.40. The owners are proposing to widen the existing driveway to provide the required third parking space, which will bring the parking on the site into compliance with the town parking regulations as part of the project. The site is located within a quarter mile of a known northern spotted owl nesting site, so staff has included the following standard condition in the resolution approving the project. Construction shall be prohibited during the northern spotted owl nesting season from February 1st through July 31st unless a plan for allowing construction activities during this period is submitted by a qualified spotted owl biologist and approved by the state with documentation of the approval provided to the town prior to initiating any construction activities. All requirements listed in the plan, including potential on-site monitoring, must be met by the applicants. There's only... Actually, this is incorrect. I believe there's four exterior lights proposed on the addition on either side of the west-facing bedroom in the upstairs study. Maybe the study's on the first floor. I can't remember. So we've included our standard condition that all the exterior lighting fixtures must be dark sky compliant, which means fully shielded and emit no light above the horizontal plane with no sag or drop lenses, side light panels or up light panels, as well as compliance with color temperature, minimizing blue rich lighting. The lighting shall not emit direct offsite illumination and shall be the minimum necessary for safety. And I want to, make it clear that this project was started by a planner who has retired and the project did not meet the setback requirements when they first submitted it, but they since revised it. So the staff report was written talking about combined side yard setback variance, but we talked to them about it's so easy to move it one foot and bring it into compliance, which they agreed to do. We gave you a redlined version that takes out all the language, I hope, relating to the setback variances. But we were able to find that the project complies with the design review criteria. And so we're recommending that you approve the project by adopting Resolution 2026-8, setting forth the findings and the conditions for the project approval. And Commissioner Newton was concerned about the creek setback because on the opposite side of the creek from the property, the creek bank is a lot taller, right? But on this side, the creek is 10 feet deep to the top of the creek. So this project does not extend into the required 20-foot creek setback from the top of the creek bank on the 80 Canyon Road side complies with the creek setback. And that would conclude our report.

Questions for staff? Go ahead.

If we don't need the combined site yard setback variance, then why is it for the commission?

it needs the design review permit, which is why in my report, I said, we believe that, that you can, the only condition you have to meet is you have to find that the project meets the design review criteria. And the criteria are not findings. They're criteria that you use to evaluate the project. And it's just that, you know, the materials comp materials will compliment the materials of the existing house and they won't clash with neighboring developments, which is always a hard one for me in Fairfax because there's not a, a single house in most of Fairfax that looks like any of their neighboring houses. You know what I mean? They have all different materials, different roof slopes, and yeah.

Okay, thanks.

It'll fit right in with the varied architecture found on Canyon Road.

Commissioner Newton. Thank you. On the table on the first page of the staff report, the revised staff report, the existing side setbacks are listed as five feet and nine feet.

I needed to change that and I didn't. It should be five and 10. They revised the plans. And so I just missed correcting that in the red line that I sent you guys.

Okay. So it should be 10 feet. Correct. And that's existing.

Actually, no, no. It's five and nine. That's what the existing house maintains now is five and nine. Okay, so in the next row where it says... There will be no change because the addition is going to meet the combined 10 feet and one foot, 10 and five.

So, okay, now I'm more confused than when I started asking this question. So let me ask it again. In the row that says existing... That's the side setbacks are listed currently as five feet and nine feet. And that is correct for the existing house. Okay. That's all I want for that one. Now the next row, it talks about proposed and it says no change. And that is correct as well. Okay.

So we're still at five feet and nine feet. You're not changing the existing house. they've slid the proposed addition, which was going to be in the 9-foot setback. The new stuff is going to be 10 feet from the side property line. So there's not going to be any new structure that doesn't meet the required setbacks. All right.

Now in the row under combined side setback, It's the formatting that's got me a little off here. Shouldn't that be 14 in the middle as opposed to five feet and nine feet?

Yes, it should.

Okay. And again, no change in the proposed, correct? Right. Okay. Um, There were questions raised about the CEQA exemption. Categorical exemption was cited at section 15301E2 and 15305A. And because we're dealing with more than 50% of the floor area of the existing residence with the addition, I think that's why we're citing E2. And E2 relates to circumstances where you're not going to add more than 10,000 square feet if you're in an area where all public services and facilities are available to allow for maximum development permissible in the general plan. And I thought that this particular part of town was beyond some of the services that we have, like sewage and gas and things like that.

They used to not have sewer. Everyone was on septic systems, but that was corrected a long time ago. There's like maybe one or two houses that were holdouts that refused to do laterals and hook up, but everybody else is hooked up to the sewer.

All right. So... The project is in an area where all public services and facilities are available to allow for maximum development permissible in the general plan.

Correct?

Correct. The second part is the area in which the project is located is not environmentally sensitive. And here we are on the creek adjacent to Cascade Canyon Nature Preserve and the Elliott Preserve. And I wanted to ask, what is the evaluation? Where... Is there a finding? I mean, you're saying this is a design review, so we're not doing findings, but we're saying that this is CEQA exempt, right? So that to me is a legal finding, but I want to understand whether we've evaluated whether or not it's in an environmentally sensitive area.

Well, all creeks are environmentally sensitive, but that's why the town has their 20-foot creek setback, right? And so this is complying with that setback. The whole area along Canyon Road has houses very close together. It's already developed, and the construction is going to be, you know, located pretty far away from the top of the creek. So unless someone, you know, really does something that, you know, you shouldn't do, like dump paint down in the creek, I don't really... I think the exemption works for this.

Okay, thanks. It looked to me like it was just at 20 feet. It looks like there was no wiggle room at all from the top of the bank. One corner of the addition touches the 20 foot, is right at the 20 feet, but everything else is back from it.

It's angled, so one corner touches the 20 feet. Most of it's further away.

Okay, but it's not like that one corner is 40 feet. That one corner is right at the 20-foot mark, just to be clear.

Yeah, and there's houses along Canyon that are in the creeks. It predated the creek setback and concern about polluting creeks, right?

Okay. And then in the resolution that you've provided to us, there's a lot of duplicative language between MMWD and Ross Valley Sanitary. And I don't want you to do this right this moment, but I just wanted to see whether they were really giving us duplicative conditions. I mean, we don't

They are understaffed, too, and they have these format formatted letters and they all say the same thing. Yeah, we get them in emails now with all that stuff. But we want to talk about this, too, because we would like to try to pare this down. Our resolutions have gotten quite out of control and we may be able to make them shorter going forward.

We could add a combined category. Yeah.

Just the reality that I think I've told you guys before. Our conditions from other agencies really mean nothing. They look at all their projects again, and they can change their conditions, right? So it's... when we repeat everything it's almost unnecessary when we started out before before this and it was mostly created for the hill area residential development permits was what that long because those were digging into hillsides taking down trees you know creating all kinds of issues when you're building on an existing lot that's already built on the old staff reports just had the comments from the agencies attached the comments from the agencies were not inserted into any kind of a resolution because it's that agency's responsibility to make sure their conditions are met along with the building department, right? So it's, I mean, it's nice for neighbors to see it, but it's kind of redundant. So we share your concern and we're going to talk about how to make things, now that we're, anyway, we're going to try to make things easier for the staff that are still here.

Okay, and my one other gripe is just the depth to the bank question, and thank you for looking that up on MarinMap. I think that that... should be in the application. Those measurements that say whether it's less than or greater than 20, I mean, 10 feet would have doubled been the 20 foot that the town allows if the stream bank is less than 10 feet deep. So it's 20 feet or two times the depth of the stream bank, whichever is deeper. So if you've got a 10-foot stream bank, then it's 20 and it's fine. But if it's any higher than 10 feet, that distance is greater than 20. Right. So what I'm saying is when people are submitting applications to the town for development of anything within, Some, you know, where their property abuts the creek, they need to provide that depth information as part of the application. So would you want a cross section through the creek maybe?

Yeah, that shows the depth.

I would want to see that. There was nothing in this application and that's why you had to do the legwork. I don't think you need to be doing the legwork. I think the applicant should be doing that legwork over.

Yeah, I... I'll just remind everybody that I so we're in a little bit of a transition period here because this project was really being handled by someone else. And now I inherited it. And so I'm sure things will kind of smooth out as we adjust to the changes that we are experiencing.

Any other questions for staff before I go? Go.

In the drawing set, I do not find the elevations of the final house. There is some very rudimentary of the existing. There are exometric views. There is no complete elevation. Only partial. They're all cut off. So where are the elevations? I'm looking at the PDF. I do not have a print version. So maybe...

This seems to be something that's happening more and more often. We're getting plans that aren't actually done by architects and they aren't even designers. Sometimes they're like, you know, from a computer program. So, I think when I look at them, I try to get as much information so I can see what the house looks like. If you guys need more information, you can continue this. If you want to ask them to give you different types of elevation drawings, it's definitely within your purview to do that. If you have questions, I'm hoping the architect is on because they told me they would be there. You can maybe talk to them about it.

Well, the question is there's only on the cover page there's one sort of, again, sort of perspective view. But so there's no drawing that shows the overall mass and volume of the, not that I can see.

If you're just looking for just the straight elevations, I see those on front and rear elevations on A3.0 and A3.1.

Those are partials.

Oh, because they're just the new?

The new with a stubby part of the existing. Normally, you do an addition to a home. You see the home, so you see the existing, and then you see it with the addition, so you get an idea about the volume of the thing. And that's not in here. Yeah, except the only thing that is a little bit of a giveaway and, you know, I can read into things, but I don't think it's supposed to be that way. On the cover sheets, there is an axonometric view, but those are, you know, that's not per se reliable. And that view actually makes you concerned a little bit because the addition is pretty big to the original home. So it makes it, well, it shouldn't be that way. You should have elevations.

So this is a problem that we're facing now. People do not hire architects, right? And you have a very small staff. So when we write two incomplete letters to somebody and we get a certain amount of information, we just go forward with it because we do not have the time to try to struggle back and forth. We give them a detailed list in the application that asks for stuff. So if you, I mean, if the commission wants to, maybe we should bring the application form and you guys can look at it and take out the things we don't really need and indicate which ones you do not want us to bend on because it's a real problem. I mean, we get applications that people think they can do by themselves on the internet using programs now, so.

Well, maybe you can, but then still it has to have.

So if you think you need more information, you should indicate. I think the architect. Well, I don't know if they're an architect or a designer is online. You can ask them questions. And if you would like to continue this and request more complete elevations, you definitely have that authority. We're not violating any. We're not close to violating any permit streamlining act requirements. So.

Any other questions for staff?

I'd just like to chime in and agree that this does happen quite often. We have barely enough information to evaluate the project. Frankly, I'm having trouble because the resolution is so low. I can't read any of the notes.

Oh, you mean on the computer?

On the drawings, yes. I can't read them. So our ability to evaluate the projects is hampered because of the information we're getting. And I just want to say that I'm in perfect. I'm in. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. And I had the similar issue and question about the, whether the hard copy is just a matter of the scan is, is the resolution of the scan is so poor. I mean,

I can't address that. I don't know what when they get posted to the website, it gets scanned from the computer. I'm not a scanner expert, so I can't address that. I mean, maybe we need to go to the paper fact.

No, there's something wrong with the scan because the PDF paper size doesn't match the actual sheet size. So something went horribly wrong when this was PDFed. We do this all the time. Something went wrong here. It's a technical issue in this case.

Any other questions for staff? Okay. The CEQA status, because we're not doing a variance. You're eliminating that second one. We no longer need 15305, paren A is not applicable anymore. Question on the chart at the bottom of the page. My understanding was that the proposed only covered the addition. what's coming before us is that correct i'm not sure i understand your question the the addition is not changing the the minimum and the combined setback that's already there correct but the minimum and combined setback of the addition meets meets through all the requirements meets the requirement correct correct so and i thought in other circumstances that there was a discussion that the proposed was only dealing with the additions or the changes and not necessarily what was already existing.

So we shouldn't have had the third line. Is that what you're saying?

No, I'm just trying to get clarification because I think there's been differences perhaps between planners coming and discussing what the proposed was. Is the proposed just applying to the addition, so what's coming before us, or is it applying to the entire build? Because the addition meets, by itself, meets the setbacks.

Correct.

If I could jump in, that last row also has a new... Far and new coverage and new height.

Correct, because it's changing all of those.

If I may jump into, I remember the discussion. It was a while back. And that idea was floated, but we rejected it because otherwise you could have an addition that does the opposed of the existing, and you would still lose your setbacks, right? You could shift them both ways. The FAR needs to record the total. So you have to look at the total. The FAR is the total, and your setbacks are if you can see through.

Yeah, the FAR I wasn't concerned about. It was just the setbacks because the addition meets the setbacks. The addition goes in a foot on the left side, and it was probably done that way to say that it meets the setbacks where the existing house didn't. So they did that for that portion to meet the setback.

But it doesn't change the noncompliance of the existing structure. That's still one foot short of the requirement.

Correct. So then let me ask the question why we're doing a combined side yard setback. We took that out of this. So we're only doing design review. And that's why it's confusing because... The addition meets the setback, so they don't need a variance for the addition.

The original submittal needed a variance, but then they decided they could move it in a foot, so it no longer needed the variance.

So that's why the proposed is confusing, and maybe there's a different way to look at that, because we're not doing a combined side yard setback, because the addition meets... the setbacks so we took that out and we're only doing design review so down here under proposed it looks like what is being proposed you know and this is a discussion for later on how we address that okay um so my other two uh commissioner newton's Question about services and the relation of the other CEQA exemption. I think Cascade Canyon, I mean Cascade Drive is the area that doesn't have services all the way out. It still has septics at the end of it, but Canyon is good. I think those were the only questions I had for staff. If there's no other questions for staff, I'm going to open it up to public comments. And is the applicant here? Either one of you want to come up and speak? You don't have to. We may have questions for you or we may have questions for the person that's on.

I'm not going to not take the opportunity. I moved here to this house in 2000 and did the remodel that happened in. It was finished in 2009. And the house remodel is part of our story. We wound up married through this process. And it's a two bedroom, one bath. It was meant to just be me as a bachelor. And since then, we now have two children, and we're in this two-bed, one-bath house. And I said, you know, we should move somewhere with four bedrooms. And the entire family said, no, we love Canyon Road. And we don't want to leave. We want the four bedrooms that we need on Canyon Road.

Thank you.

Does anyone have questions from the commission for the applicants? Or is the applicant's designer or architect online that could answer any questions?

I have a hand online. I can't verify the identity of the hand.

Okay. Come on up then if no one had questions.

My name is Lisa Asher and I live on Cascade.

Could you speak up just a little bit or bring the mic closer? Thanks.

I'm Lisa Asher. I live on Cascade Drive. I have lived there for over 10 years and we have an open window that looks out without curtains. one of the favorite parts of my house. And ever since like two years ago, maybe a year ago, they started, I'm sorry, no offense, but started cutting down trees and making themselves seen. And so now, and it's not a big deal, but I could see everything. And I'm seeing cutting down of trees, big, massive trees. And then I get this notice that they want to build A two-story, 70%. They want to increase their house 70%. We live out in this most beautiful wild area, and they want to have the hazel house. The hazel house is a disgusting house, and none of us like it. And so I think it should be one of the only houses out there that looks like that. But anyway, I'm going to go on and say about the CEQA, you know, all of these things and how this, let me see. This 15301E1 caps exempt additions at 50%. So, the tree removal. I want to go to that. I'm skipping way ahead. I just need to know if they had a permit to do that. Was it part of the plan to build the house? The hardship. Hardship of exceeding the 50%, you know, is... Based on many other things, not just the desire to have a bigger home, you can actually find a home in Fairfax that is four bedrooms in a different area that has sidewalks and big areas and big lots, not wild. We live out in a beautiful, wild area, and I'd like to keep it that way. And so let's see. So I'm going to just say the Cascade Canyon area is usually wild, which I already said probably, I don't know, five times. And that it doesn't survive incremental change. You can't unbuild this house. You can't unbuild the extra huge 70% that they want to do. Like we can't unbuild the Hazel House. It's there. And so Fairfax is unpretentious and it's close to nature. And it's not by accident. It's by design. And we've got to save it and we've got to keep it. And that's not even mentioning the red-legged frog or whatever that is protected just an inch or two away. So I am trying to protect my neighborhood. I'm afraid it's going to turn into Kentfield or Mill Valley or something that is pretentious and selfish and not in line with the natural beauty that we have out there. So that's it. My name is Lisa Asher. I live on Cascade. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone on Zoom?

Yes, I do. Pardon me. I do have one hand on Zoom. And last name Rabini. Please go ahead.

Hi. Hello. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Hi. My name is Zilara Bani. I'm a representative for MEX.

I'm sorry. Can you ask her to speak up?

Thanks. We hear you talking, but it's a little bit low. Can you speak closer to the microphone?

Yes, I'll do my best. So, I'm here from the applicant, from Formex. First, thank you so much for this discussion. There's no variance for this project. The design is compliant with, like you said already, with all the zoning requirements, no grading. It's according to, we're not exceeding more than the FAR that we require. We also did all the model for the question of the elevation. We did it on Revit. So we have everything in 3D. If you want, we can share it now to the Zoom so you can see everything. And we try to keep the privacy also from the neighbors. If you can see in the elevation, the windows in the second floor are small. We really try our best to reduce the visibility of this addition The architecture matches exactly the existing house. And we want to allow our clients, like he said, to continue living in this house. I think it's also important. We maintain the distance from the creek. We did our best in order to avoid any... And it's confusing with the code, so I'm hoping that it will be okay and the request will approve and we are here to answer questions. Also, the designer, Mitsuko, is here online, so if you want us to show the Revit and the 3D, we can do it.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming. I hear you. We love Fairfax and we have a new neighbor and she took down a huge oak tree and another tree on her property. It was not us. And so I just wanted to let you know we love it. You know, we have a giant oak tree on our property. We have a few. And I totally understand what you're saying. But the fire department had a nice tour. Can you direct it here?

Sorry.

Okay. So that tree was not us. We have gotten permits for everything that we're trying to do with the trees, right? Because we've lived here almost... I've lived here almost 20 years. And then 75 Canyon is just... one house away. It's not the Hazel house. So it is similar. Like, you know, it's just the next house, like not next house, but the one over. That was it. So now I can see why you'd be mad is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, no, we're not trying to do that. It's like the rooms are tiny. Okay.

Please direct it to the dais. Sure. Yeah. So I want to point out that it's not a hazel house. The lot is a pie shape. And that's part of why we're bumping right up to the 20-foot setback is because there's not a place to put a regular setback. structure. So it's not a hazel house. It's a pie shape that's tucked back in the back. The backside of it is covered in trees. The creek is to the back, and there's a big hill, and nobody's going to see the back of our house. And what you'll see from the front, you should be able to see from the drawings, is a little triangle. The existing structure is a shed roof like this that you see from the front. You just see one story and it goes to 14 feet in the back. And there'll be a very narrow wedge of triangles sticking out on the left. It's not ostentatious in your face over the top. I don't think anybody's going to know that it's there. Thank you.

So if there's no other public comments, I'm going to close public comment and bring it back to the Commission for discussion.

I have a number of comments on the ordinance. I don't have any further comments regarding the project, so I guess I will defer to the rest of the commissioners if you guys have substantive issues with the project.

Commissioner Pfeffer?

Yeah, not a... substantive issues. This is, I guess, in my daily wick on the CEQA exemptions. And my understanding of what we're citing here is in the list of regulatory guidelines that the Public Resources Code requires being made and E to the 50% floor area or 10,000 square foot. What's being cited is a non-exclusive list in the code. So these are all just examples. And the overall category for class one exemptions like this is if the um project involves negligible or no expansion of use and this is a home uh for four people and it's going to be a home for four people with enough bedrooms i don't see that i don't think that's the kind of expansion of use that this was meant to cover but you know um so i didn't have a problem with it from that aspect and i'm generally um if there's no glaring issues and i don't think i didn't see any personally um we should be helping to facilitate families staying in fairfax because we don't want fairfax to become a vacation community again thanks any other comments

Maybe quickly summarizing. Yeah, I can see. So this is a fan-shaped lot. So that's where the odd angles come from. That's kind of obvious. I can see the volumes. What the building really would look like in its proportion is unfortunately poor represented, even though there is an existing 3D model in there. So I don't understand why that is. Because there is no drawing that clearly tells you what it looks like now and what it would look like with this thing added to it. And the reason that's probably important is because the addition is a two-story to a one-story building. It doesn't violate anything as far as I can tell. I don't think it's a wrong project, but... It's very awkward to make a decision without being able to understand what it is now and what it will look like when it's done. That's sort of fundamentally wrong. Again, that's not a conclusion. I just want to highlight that.

Okay. I know you're going to make comments. On the reso, Commissioner Newton, I had a couple too. Let me go with mine first before you address them. On the title, there should be an A after design review.

Hold on just a moment, if you might, Chair. I think you've got a commissioner over there who's itching to say something.

I just wanted to make a couple comments before we get into the edits.

I'm sorry.

Go ahead. I can't agree more with the comments from my colleagues about the lack of documentation to evaluate the project. And I'll address that a little bit more at the end of the meeting. But I want to just say that there's not enough information, frankly, to evaluate the project in the packet. That said, I appreciate the house that's there now. I think that if the character and care is given to the addition that has been given to the house that's there now, I have full confidence it's going to be a great addition to the neighborhood and community. So the project has my support.

Okay. And thank you for that. So on the reso, on the title, on the second line, there should be the letter A after design review. It should be, I'm sorry, it should be a 4A, okay? I'm sorry, you're adding the word four. 4A, 917 square foot. So after permit 4A. Right, 4A and then describing that. Page 3. In the third paragraph. It doesn't address the date those plans were received. And I think that's for, you know, when we do these, I think that's important. So development plans and color elevations received March 12th. I'm sorry, where are you? Page three. of the reso, under the whereas, the first paragraph under the whereas, where it says the project is approved based on the project plan set of form X, including the preliminary development plans and color elevations. It should say received March 12, 2026. That's when it was date stamped. Page six, number 31 at the bottom, change dark sky compliant to capital D, dark, no space, capital S, sky. And those were the only changes I saw to the revised reso.

Okay. So back to the title, where it says 917 square foot, two story, two bedroom. And then in the first whereas clause, delete the word on after the whereas. and you've added a lowercase room after meditation, and I want you to add after that the, oh, never mind, sorry. The first whereas clause should say, whereas the town of Fairfax received an application from Mark and Minimal for the addition of, a 917 square foot blah, blah, blah. Under paragraph one at the bottom of this page, I think it should say the exterior of the building will be articulated with windows of various sizes. And I'm struggling with maintain a 10-foot setback on the east side since we've got a 9-foot setback on the existing structure, but I don't think I'll worry about that. All right.

The addition maintains. Right.

And the addition maintains... Okay. And also in that sentence, it says, and the house on that side will exceed the minimum required five foot side yard setback. I don't think that's true. Instead of saying that side, we should say the west side. The combined side yard setback on the west, no. I don't know how you want to say that, Linda.

Maybe we just talk about the windows and forget the last part of it. What do you think?

Okay, yeah. So the exterior of the building will be articulated with windows of various sizes. The windows on the west side of the building facing 84 Canyon Road will be clerestory windows to maintain the privacy of the house at 84 Canyon Road, period. The addition will have a flat roof to be similar to the roof of the existing structure. So I'm just deleting everything after the address and leaving the last sentence in. OK, go ahead.

May I comment on the last one? The existing structure has a sloped roof, according to the existing drawings.

Similar, not emulating. You can't say that. These are suggestions. You can change them.

All right, well, let's delete the last sentence about the roof, or we'll just say we'll have a roof, which is similar to the rest of the house, which also has a roof. On the next page, too, on paragraph 7, I want to cut out the middle of this paragraph. So the first part of the paragraph would stay the size and design of the structure result in a finished project that is in proportion to its building site and then has balance and delete all the way down to where the word balance comes up again. So it now reads, and it has a balance and unity among its external features so as to present a harmonious appearance similar to the physical character of other homes in the vicinity.

Can you repeat that one?

Yeah. So the paragraph begins on paragraph seven, the size and design of the structure result in a finished project that is in proportion to its building site and that has balance and And then I'm deleting all the way down until you see the word balance come up again, deleting that second word balance and leaving the rest. So it now says it has balance and unity among its external features so as to present a harmonious appearance similar to the physical character of other homes in the vicinity. The next paragraph eight is my favorite paragraph. The project will not require the removal of any existing trees. And then when we go to the next page three, paragraph four says prior to the removal of any trees subject to the town tree ordinance, not approved with this action. And I want to change that to say, Prior to the removal of any trees subject to the town tree ordinance and then delete not approved with this action because we're not approving the removal of any trees with this action. The applicant shall secure a tree cutting permit from the Fairfax tree committee. Okay. We're just going to delete that little not approved with this action clause. Okay. Then On page five, this is where we have the Marin Water District and the Ross Valley Sanitary District writing the same but slightly different things. My recommendation is we delete the duplicative stuff from both and create a section that says both. but we can leave it redundant. That's what you guys want to do. You want to leave it redundant.

I, you know, I would, for this purpose, I would leave those as they put them in and their standard for what we're putting in and then address this perhaps as a broader issue for general rezos. I think at this point it's just easier to leave this in for this purpose and

Okay, I will defer if all of you guys feel that way. I don't know. I think I have ADD or something that makes me want to fix it, but I'll just go on. Paragraph 28, Linda, says indoor plumbing fixtures must meet specific efficiency requirements. Can Ross Valley Sanitary be more specific about what those specific requirements are?

The planning director and I have been talking about, I suggest we stop including other agencies' conditions in our resolution. These agencies get to look at the building permits when the plans go to the building department. Stuff that's evolved over years with different planning directors, this is what it's gotten to.

And if I can comment on that, I think to that point, some of this is informing the public and the applicants

The way we used to do it, we didn't have all these things of this huge thing. We just attached the comments from the other agencies as an attachment and people could read them, but we didn't try to incorporate everybody and everything into our resolutions. We covered our planning and building and public work stuff in the resolution. That was it. We didn't even do resolutions when I started here. It was a letter of action with a list of conditions attached to the letter of action.

And things have changed, right? So this is a discussion for another time. My only question for that would be when you did that previously, did you attach all those things to the reso?

We attach them as an attachment to the staff report.

All right. The discussion for another time.

D, right? And we just staple them on.

Yeah, we can just discuss this another time. I will say that everything from 21 to 29 could be replaced by get a building permit. And it doesn't even need to be in here at all. But anyway, that's just my opinion.

I'll also like to correct 20 and 27, all of the districts. And the first one 20 is referring to the water district, all districts rules and regulations in effect must be complied with. And then 27 is referring to Ross Valley sanitary district, all of the districts rules regulations in effect must at the time must be complied with. Over.

Is that it?

So with that, do we have a motion and a second?

Well, I will move with the changes recommended by the Commission to approve resolution number 202608, a resolution of the Fairfax Planning Commission approving application number 2604, design review permit for a 917 square foot, two-story, two-bedroom, two-bathroom laundry room, study room and meditation room to the existing residents at 80 Canyon Road and expanding the driveway to provide the third required parking space.

Second.

Kelly?

Aye.

Pfeffer?

Yes.

Jansen?

No.

Newton?

Yes. Can you repeat that? I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.

He said no.

Okay.

Newton?

Yes.

Chair Swift? Yes. Yes. So the motion carries. There is a 10-day appeal process, and information on that process can be obtained from the Planning Department. Thank you. Thank you. So item 361, Bolinas Road, application 2604, consideration of a cannabis business permit application and a parking variance to operate a medical use storefront retail business has been continued until the April 16, 2026 regular planning commission meeting. There are no discussion items. So we're going to go on to the minutes of February 19th, if anyone has corrections. Give me a second to pull them out.

Okay, so item number three. It indicates that Chair Swift closed the public hearing twice, so we should delete the second reference to Chair Swift close the public hearing, delete the first sentence of the next paragraph, which is duplicative of the first sentence of the paragraph above. The Commission discussed the ordinance. There was agreement that the amnesty period should and at the end of this housing cycle. That's all in the previous paragraph. Start the sentence with a suggested change. And that would fix that. Item four, the title drive-through facilities. I don't know. I, I am not like, I'm just looking at my notes, but I am for something about the title drive through facilities. Maybe it was typo. The first paragraph under item four, we've got planning commissions, possessive ass, possessive ass is missing. Um, Page five, after the hearing was closed, paragraph indicates that we would like to hear more as opposed to her more.

Can you go a little slower and tell me where you are for that one? Page five. Page five.

after the hearing is closed paragraph. In the middle of the next paragraph, there's a reference to the Planning Commission wanting to hear more, but we wanna hear more. And then on item four, I don't think we see Commissioner Petrone's vote. And I don't know whether Commissioner Kelly's absence is repeated consistently or not. So I don't know. Be consistent with whether or not we indicate who's present and who's absent. Those are my comments.

Next.

I've got one more. the Patroni missing, but on item one, my vote is missing.

Nope. And if you did this already, let me know. On page one, the approval of the agenda is missing Commissioner Jansen's vote. And on some of these, I'm opening the public comment period or the public hearing. It's not consistent through there. So it's opening the public comment period, closing the public comment period. And you got Commissioner Pfeffer missing from the vote. And then on page five, for the vote there, it was missing, unless you mentioned it, Commissioner Newton's vote. Oops, sorry. Which one? So I thought on amendments to the town code relate, oh, formula business. OK, on continuing the discussion on page five, unless you mentioned it already, we don't have Commissioner Petroni's vote. Did we get that? OK. OK, that's all I had. Does anyone want to make a motion?

There's one more at the very end. Sorry. Adjournment at 11 o'clock XXX. If we hurry up, we can beat that. Motion to approve the agenda.

Tamara, could you tell us what time our last meeting ended?

Not off the top of my head, but I can look at the recording if you'd like.

Can staff look at the recording and see what time it ended?

I did look at the recording. So my version of the minutes says 11.10. You're saying that the ones you guys have online says XXX?

Yeah, mine's 11XX. It's the sexy part of 11.

Mine says 11.10. Yeah.

Yeah, mine's the printed version.

So the printed versions show what's online.

Mine says 1110.

Mine has XX in yellow, highlighted.

This could all be a problem with the person that was posting all our stuff is gone. Now it's me and Jeff. Well, let's cut us some slack or we're going to fire ourselves.

Let's just make sure that when they're corrected that it does reflect 1110.

Well, they've already been corrected because I say 1110.

With the corrections that we're making to the minutes... Let's make sure that it stays 1110. And we'll post that.

We'll post the corrected position online.

So do we have a motion for that?

Motion to approve the minutes. Second. With the corrections.

And it's really all my fault because the planning director doesn't reveal.

With all the corrections. Second. Second.

Vote. On the minutes. Kelly. Pepper.

Yes.

Jansen.

Yes.

Newton.

Yes.

Chair Swift.

Yes. Thank you. So we have no discussion items. We're going to go to the planning director's report, if you have anything.

Yeah, the only thing I have to report is that the town council approved a moratorium on formula businesses, which means that Folks could still apply for formula business, but we wouldn't be allowed to process them until the moratorium expires. So currently the moratorium would expire on April 18th. There's a report that's due 10 days in advance of that on April 8th. And then the town council fortuitously has a meeting on April 15th where they could consider extending the moratorium or they could just let it expire.

So a question on that. When you said a report is due before that, what kind of a report?

Just a report on if we have any preliminary findings on why we need the why we need to regulate formula businesses and why, and maybe why the moratorium would need to be extended. It's just a very simple report. It's required by the, the law that relates the state law that relates to moratoriums.

So it's possible since we haven't, we're continuing discussion that that report may say we need to potentially extend the moratorium.

Yeah. It's not going to be very detailed report because of the time limits.

Okay. May I ask a question? So I would expect that you would be bringing the formula business ordinance back to the planning commission for further discussion.

Correct.

Before there is a recommendation to the town council to move one way or the other. Is that right?

That would be the idea, yep. And that's kind of unrelated to the moratorium. I mean, whether there's a moratorium in place or not, we would be coming back to the Planning Commission.

Okay. And we discussed a number of different issues at our previous Planning Commission meeting when we talked about I mean, we had a public commenter today reference the decision that was the subject of our conversation about potentially changing our existing formula business requirements. And have you had any more thoughts about the direction that you think you'd like to see the town go when we get to that point?

Oh, yeah. Well, that's not on the agenda tonight. So we'd have to talk about that at a future agenda.

Do you have a sense if you're going to be sending a report to the town council and asking them to. I mean, I would assume you'd be asking and recommending that they extend this moratorium. Do you have a time frame for when you think you'd bring it back to us to talk about the. the existing ordinance, you know, without the, the moratorium and what kind of changes do you have a sense of when that's going to be something that we're talking about?

I think it'd be within the next few months for sure. Yeah. We want to have a well developed kind of recommendation before we come back.

Any other questions for the planning director on this report? OK. Going on to commissioner comments and requests. I have a couple, but I'll go. Does anyone have questions or comments for staff?

Well, I'd like to follow up on design review requirements published to the public and required of applicants. I think by memory we've talked about this a number of times in the past and trying to set up a valuable requirement list that all projects would need to comply with. And I don't know the best way to do that. I can tell you that I'd be happy to come forward with some precedent for the staff or commission to evaluate.

And I think along those lines, It would be good for everyone to see what the requirements are from applicants. Their staff had mentioned that there's like a list that's given to them with the items.

It would be great. Yeah, if you look under building and planning services, there's a forms or applications list and you look for the master planning application and it has an extensive list of I'll just leave it at that. I think the problem we have is we have people that are not professionally trained architects that don't really know what those descriptions mean. And in order for staff to, we're being required to try to train people's people that are doing their drawings. And we don't have the legal right to tell them you have to hire an architect, right? We could spend months rejecting, rejecting, rejecting.

So to that point, we can, it's a master, I guess what you're telling me is for anything that's coming to us, there is a master application list that would say, if you're asking for this, you need to do this. If you're asking for this...

No, it doesn't. We don't separate out. It's just the whole list, right? And then it'll say things like, you know, staff can waive the shade studies. You know, if someone's not adding a second floor, I don't usually require a shade study, right? But it literally tells them everything that's supposed to be in the plans. And because they're not licensed, a lot of the people we're getting are not licensed professionals. I don't know what they are. It's getting harder and harder and harder to get...

Understand. So for us, what we can all do is go to the website and pull down what's there so we have an understanding to start that conversation.

And it might help because if you have people that aren't, you know, you guys might look at the list and say, this is too complicated. You can just say it this way and your average person will understand it better. You know what I mean? Because it doesn't seem to be working. I mean, even the architects don't... You know, like the architects, I don't know if they taught you this in architecture school where, you know, you have the title block, you have the architect's name, the seal, you've got all this information. The architects today aren't even coming in with that kind of stuff done.

I think that... You know, first of all, I think if there should be a reasonable list and if it's not there, you should not move it forward. It doesn't matter how long it takes. I mean, if you're going to apply for a driver's license, you need to bring certain things. Yes.

I think the problem is that we can't just tell people we are not going to bring this forward. We have to put everything in writing. And we literally have no clerical help. And it's like there were two people in current planning. Now we're down to one. And so not only do we're only closed one day a week and you're constantly answering questions on the phone and going to the front counter while you're trying to write stuff. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So that's a logistical problem.

I believe that based on the staffing levels that this town can afford, you have to minimize what's submitted for these for these discretionary permits because you just don't have the staff available. to go back and forth over and over with people.

So it does not have to be extensive, but it has to be clear. It's a lot of common sense. And I think so, and I understand the logistical problem, but maybe then if you bring it to the commission, if it can't be handled there, then I think we as a planning commission need to be more stringent. We'll vote it down straight away. Bang.

And I think to that point, I mean, and I understand staff's concerns with staffing and those issues, but those shouldn't be the driver. I understand. But that shouldn't be the driver as to what is required of an application. They're kind of two different issues. And I think the first thing is for us to take a look at what is online that's being asked and assess those and maybe clarify some of that. And that's the first step in the process.

Just so you know, we did use the planning application from San Anselmo as the basis to come up with our new application. So it's, I don't know if they still use it anymore. We came up with it over the pandemic, but the problem is you're dealing with people that when you say you need to give us a building elevation, they're not architects. They don't know what a building elevation is. It's like, then we have to try to explain it to them. We don't have time to train.

I understand, but then they can risk having a project not approved. So we'll go down that path and we'll start that process.

I have a recommendation from experience dealing with other small municipalities, not as small as this one, that creating a prototype application that you could hand out might be helpful.

Does that give them examples of like what?

It gives them an application. It can be anonymous, right? It's not a particular application that we've received or something, but an application that they can emulate, right? So it does have building elevations. It does have building plans. It has the list of information that we need to see on a plan. And that shows them what it looks like. It has a random site plan so we can understand what the vegetation proposal is, what the hardscape proposal is. So you can just say that's what you need to do.

Yeah, I would love to see if that works. Yeah, I was renewing now isn't working.

I was going to suggest that sort of like the same way we talked about with the design, objective design stuff in these maps of having examples of what it looks like just for that. Even if we get up like the top 10 things people mess up on and just have an example of what you're asking for that people don't understand and just append it to the end example. Um, applications, the other thing I was going to suggest is maybe the planning commission wants to consider. Uh, well, I was so to my next comment is maybe the planning commission wants to consider a. Near future agenda item, uh. recommending to the town council prioritizing increasing staffing in the planning uh department and if it's a matter of revenue uh looking at the planning fees or however we get revenue that can you be used to hire extra people in the planning department because people don't want to wait six months for their applications okay i appreciate the thought though oh Well, if there's an agenda item, it makes it, you know, more it incentivizes, just like for us, people to come and yell at us in person. Right.

Speak for yourself. So I had a couple comments. One, because we kind of read into this. What is the status of the recruitment for the vacant planning person? Is there a recruitment out there?

Yeah, we did send out a recruitment. We're holding off on hiring anybody until we get through the budget.

So we sent out an application, a vacancy announcement and an opening. So are we getting then applications?

Oh, yeah. About 70 of them.

Okay. And we're just not filling it now until we see the budget review? So potentially this would be something that wouldn't be filled until next fiscal year?

It may never be filled. It may be eliminated from the budget. So we don't know yet whether it's going to exist after when the budget's adopted.

So when there is a budget hearing... Mm-hmm. Coming up, a general annual budget review. Correct. Okay. So that may be a place where people speak to priorities. Okay. The second comment I have is I'm going to own a mistake that I made at the last meeting. We discussed... the changes to the ADU. And there were five of us here. And one of the things that wasn't mentioned, and we got kind of into the weeds with the discussion on changes that we wanted to see. But what I didn't mention at the time that anytime we have before us a recommendation on a change to the code, there's a different requirement to get it passed. So for things, and it's in chapter 17, that if you are Recommending changes to code you need a two-thirds Yes vote from the voting members the voting Members of the Planning Commission so seven Planning Commission is seven people That's your voting Limit even if you don't have Seven position filled so that meant that to have a recommendation To the Planning Commission. I mean to the town council we needed to have five. Yes votes To move what we did forward on that we had four to one so so while that was the vote it wasn't enough to pass this on what we worked on to the town council keeping in mind that there's been other times when the council has given us things um to review because it was in our jurisdiction

And I have to correct that a little bit. It just means you did not advance a recommendation of approval to the council. It just means it goes to the council with a no recommendation. Correct.

Correct. But I'm not sure that was the intent of what we were discussing at the time. And there wasn't that clarity there. We've had other things that have been given to us by the council, and there's been a few I can remember, where the recommendation to move it forward was unanimously a no vote. So, you know, I should have brought that up. I was owning that mistake. You know, we were deep in the depths on that. So what we did isn't going forward. And if you could just state what's going to happen at the April meeting.

Yeah, there'll be a public hearing held at the April 15th meeting to consider the amendments to the ADU ordinance. And so it'll just, I mean, since we didn't get a recommendation from the Planning Commission, I mean, it's going to pretty much be the same thing that you guys recommended, but it's going to be presented as a staff recommendation.

But a lot of the things that we looked at were things that were not part of the original plan.

correct ordinance yeah the only the only distinction is that we have to present what we're bringing to the town council it's going to be the staff recommendation to the town council and we could say that it was informed by comments from the planning commission but we just have to characterize it as we didn't get a two-thirds vote from the Planning Commission. Therefore, this is not the Planning Commission recommendation. This is the staff recommendation. We did not get a recommendation from the Planning Commission.

And within that there were things, I mean, you know, we, we touched on a lot of subjects in that discussion in February, but there are also pieces to that, um, emergency ordinance that was passed that were wrong. So we want to make sure that then that what's captured that goes forward to the town council also addresses the things that were clearly wrong in the emergency ordinance.

Okay.

Chair, if I may, is it, so it is not two-thirds of the votes, but it is two-thirds of the members of the commission? Is that what it says?

It's two-thirds of the full number of commissioners that you have. So you have seven commissioners, whether they're filled or not, or vacant. So with that, it is two-thirds of that number, which comes out to rounding up and all that five to move something forward. And that's why at times when the commission has been Short, you know, we had maybe a couple of vacancies. There was maybe more urgency. Well, urgency to get the positions filled because you were getting into that lower number that made those things potentially impossible to do.

And this is a uniquely Fairfax ordinance, by the way. Right. Yeah.

You mean the section that deals with a two-thirds? Correct. And I can kind of understand perhaps some of the philosophy behind that, but yeah. So again, I own it. I apologize.

I think it's Commissioner Pfeffer who's owned it.

Yeah. Yeah. It just gives me more leverage at the next meeting.

That's what you think. The power is going to his head.

I apologize for not being here.

So with that, if there's nothing else, can we have a motion to adjourn?

I move to adjourn the meeting. Second.

All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

So at 9-12.