Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay. The planning commission of, 06/18/2025 will be called to order at 06:34PM. I would like to have Stephanie please call the roll to establish a quorum.

Commissioner West?

Here.

Commissioner Barcelona?

Here.

Commissioner Hurst?

Here.

Commissioner Reynolds? Here. Commissioner Herrera? Absent. Commissioner Laney? Absent. Commissioner Morales? Absent. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for being here today. Just FYI for the listening audience and for those in the room, we have two commissioners who have recused themselves from tonight's proceedings, Commissioner Herrera, because he may, be working with his company with the applicant and Commissioner Laney, for, I believe, having a friend, who's working on this project. We thank them for that. Commissioner Morales is out for another reason.

If you'll all join me in the Pledge of Allegiance, please rise. Thank you. And now is the time on the agenda where we call for citizen communication. Is there anybody here in the audience who would like to address the Commission on anything that isn't on tonight's agenda? Okay, hearing and seeing none, we will close citizen communication.

With that, Commissioners, that takes us to the minutes of our last meeting, 05/21/2025. Any comments or suggestions or a motion on the minutes?

No. I'll move the minutes.

Okay. Thank you, Commissioner Barcelona. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Commissioner Hearst. Thank you. Any discussion on the motion on the floor? Hearing and seeing none, Stephanie please call the roll. Commissioner West?

Yes. Commissioner Barcelona?

Yes.

Commissioner Hurst?

Yes.

Commissioner Reynolds? Yes. Commissioner Herrera? Absent. Commissioner Laney? Absent. Commissioner Morales? Absent.

Okay. Thank you, commissioners. The minutes are approved. That takes us to new business MSTR 20 five-seventy four SMUD Administrative Operations Building and Communications Tower Plan Development Permit and Conditional Use Permit and determination that no further environmental review is required. Good evening, Josh.

Good evening, Chair Reynolds, Commissioners. Josh Kincaid with the Community Development Department and, there we go. And yes, this evening our item is for the SMUD Administrative Operations Building Communications Tower. It is a request for a planned development and a conditional use permit. The project is located within the Lake Forest Technical Center, which is situated between Folsom Boulevard and the American River and it is located in the Light Industrial Zoning District with a planned development overlay.

The Lake Forest Tech Center was first approved in 1980 and has been developed with office and light manufacturing uses since then and the project site, as you can see, is currently vacant. Here's some of the adjacent buildings within the tech center to get a sense of the architecture that's out there for later architectural discussion. There are a lot of longer one to two story buildings with flat roofs as you can see here. And here's some more buildings in the park, with similar architectural features. So here's an image of the, easements on the building site.

There's a private access easement and a 20 foot public utility easement for drainage that are proposed to be abandoned. Let me show those as the access easement and then the drainage easement is this one here. The drainage easement is proposed to be rerouted along the southern edge of the project site and, connect with the existing drainage basin so it'll, it will not sit under the proposed building that we're to see. Our engineering division has reviewed the proposal and does not oppose it. Here we see the proposed site plan.

The applicant's proposing a 47,000 square foot administrative operations building for SMUD, an enclosed but open roof work yard attached to the building in the south, and a communications tower just northeast of the proposed building is shown here in blue. Site improvements include two gated access points to the south, here and here, A waste enclosure and landscaping and gating along the property border as shown. You can see the landscaping here in the site plan. Under the proposed plan developments, the applicant is seeking design approval of the building sites and a different parking requirement than what is currently shown in the Lake Forest design guidelines. I'll briefly cover the parking discussion now.

The guidelines call out a parking ratio for office use, but what SMUD is using for the space floor is much narrower focused than a typical office use and requires much less staffing, making the 23 spaces that they're proposing here more than adequate for their uses. We do have a condition of approval, stating that if the building were expanded or converted to a more employee intensive use, we would require additional off street parking. Now looking at the proposed architecture of the building, it's a single story building, 28 feet in height. The north elevation does have a window, as you can see here, a large window, but the building is otherwise non windowed for security reasons. It consists of three shades of beige concrete masonry units unit materials, excuse me, with, different textures, which we'll get to in a bit.

And here are the south and west elevations. There are, some bronze accents along the building's downspouts to add a little, extra material. The building utilizes very simple architecture as you can see, consistent with many of the buildings in the center. The lower roof level you see here on the, on the west elevation, is for the enclosed work yard. And here we see the three types of proposed masonry unit materials for the walls.

The image on the right is a zoomed in version of the wall so you can see those three materials in context of each other. They're a little harder to see on the overall elevations. Staff believes that these three building materials help break up the monotony of the walls. The building's also proposed to be set back 100 feet from the front property line and you can see here in this rendering that the proposed landscaping is rather robust with several shade trees along the property's border. So much of the building will not be visible when the trees have reached maturity.

Here we have a rendering of the project site from the interior street. You can see the wrought iron fence around the project perimeter here and the trees that help obscure the building. Staff does support the site design and the building design as proposed. So moving on to the proposed communications tower. This type of facility requires a conditional use permit to operate and the Lake Forest Plan Development Design Guidelines state that structures over 40 feet in height are not allowed.

Therefore, the applicant seeking both a use permit to operate the tower and a planned development to extend the height of that tower above 40 feet in height. The tower is proposed to be 100 feet in height which is the height required for SMUD to meet their communication needs associated with the building. The tower includes two radio dishes and a lightning rod. The tower will be masked as a monopine with a brown trunk around the tower surrounded by false branches. One of the unique things about this tower versus others that we typically see is that it is excuse me, it does not have any aerial arrays that we typically see and SMUD will not co locate their tower with other, with cellular companies.

So you end up with a much cleaner product than what you typically see for commercial cell towers in this case. Alright, so the applicant provided some renderings of the Monopine facility from surrounding land. The images on left, top and bottom show, the Monopine from the American River Bike Trail. Note that there are already existing utility poles and power lines on the Western Area Power Authority site that's just north of the project site. And as well as heavy greenery along the trail.

So the monopine is not anticipated to stick out too drastically when viewed from the open space. The image on the upper right is from Woodmere Road. The facility would be clearly most visible from here and finally the lower right is an image from the middle of the river where you can see that it would mostly blend into the existing foliage. Note that the applicant did work with staff to move the facility inward away from the parkway itself so that it's now 700 feet from the bike trail, 800 feet from the bank of the river and over 2,000 feet from the nearest residence to the west. So for CEQA purposes, the applicant, acted as a lead agency and already, prepared and certified an initial study and mitigated negative declaration for the project.

They routed that draft document for public review and took in comments from members of the public and public agencies, including state parks. Based on these comments, they did change the monopole communications tower to a monopine. Initially, it was not masked as a monopine for aesthetic purposes. They did increase the radius used for a special status migratory bird survey mitigation measure and they added in some descriptive language regarding landscaping and access, access and egress to the project site. SMUD did send the final document to all commenters and to the city and determined these minor changes did not necessitate recirculation of the ISMND.

The document was certified in February and staff did incorporate all the mitigation measures from that document, which included air quality, biological and cultural resources requirements into the staff report in front of you today. Those included the measure that was modified as part of the final ISMND. So, since publication of that document, of the ISMND, excuse me, the project has changed some of its scope by shrinking the building size by about 50%, reducing parking, down to the 23 spaces and enclosing the work yard with a wall that we saw. It was previously shown as being unenclosed. Staff worked with the environmental consultant that worked on the ISMND and it was determined that those changes did not change any of the conclusions of that document and that no further CEQA review is required.

I'll also note there was some confusion from the public about a link that was provided in the staff report to the CEQA documents on the State Clearing House website. While that final document wasn't directly on that page, there was a link on that page that provided the location of the final, ISMND. So, clarity, staff has provided a direct link to the final ISMND document as a green sheet. Staff has confirmed with SMUD that they are comfortable moving forward with this modification. So, staff sent notices to property owners within 300 feet and put the notice in the Folsom Telegraph. We did receive three public comments that we'd be happy to discuss And with that, we do recommend approval of the project as condition per the, language on the screen and in the staff report. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Josh. Commissioners, are there any questions for our staff? Commissioner West.

All right. I'm going to start by saying I appreciate that, to me, the building design used to long ago work in that business park. I'm very familiar with it. The building seems to fit with the neighborhood well. And I appreciate the effort that's been put in to make it a pine tree rather than just a gigantic 100 foot tower that's there.

That all being said, I'm having a hard time with the justification on going against the development standards for the area. I'm going go on a little spiel here to kind of do my basis for that and for you guys to be able to respond to it. I mean, looking at PD81A, which is the development standards for the Lake Forest Technical Center. So Section eight, building height, no building antenna nor structure of any kind shall exceed the height of 40 feet above the established building grade for the site. And there's then Section 17 for special exceptions saying developments such as those on multiple lots or condominium developments, which may have special site design and planning requirements not addressed by these standards, may apply for a use permit.

The Planning Commission may issue a use permit where it finds there exists circumstances in the nature of the use or its special design needs that make strict enforcement impractical or out of character with the intent of the standards and that the design of the project is consistent with the intent of these standards. Having a hard time meeting that when the intent of the standards is clearly nothing higher than 40 feet, even if you make it look like a pine, it's still two and a half times bigger than that. At that point, I would think it would need something more in tune with the variance, which under Chapter seventeen thirty eight, Section 80, I'll just read the first half of it that applies to this, which is the regulations of the underlying zone relating to height setback lot area and coverage, parking or other provisions of the title may be varied when such a variance will result in improved design of the development and will permit desirable arrangements of structures in relation to parking areas, parks and parkways, pedestrian walks and other such features. Making it prettier, I think, is good, but it's still a 100 foot tower in a 40 foot planned development area.

I'm not seeing a way to justify that.

Do you have a question, Commissioner

Do you disagree with my position on that? Do you have some other thing that I'm not seeing that justifies the kind of wild variation from the plan development plan?

Sure. To address a couple of the the kind of technical things that we looked at as part of this as to what avenue the applicant would take to request the additional height, We did look at the existing plan development that has that out that talks about getting a use permit for additional standards. We considered a variance as a potential option except that that would usually be a variance from the zoning code itself, not the plan developments. And so, ultimately found that the strongest option to, to propose is a plan development to ask for that additional, that additional height. And so we, instead of looking at the existing plan development and seeing what justification has to be to ask for a use permit for additional height there, we felt that that would that was not necessarily appropriate for for this case.

We determined that if we can meet the findings of a plan development, which we have in the staff report, then that would be the potential way to support additional height. The 40 foot standard doesn't come from the code. It comes from this existing plan development and so they are essentially seeking a new plan development to allow for that additional height for this specific facility that's masked as a mono a pine tree. So ultimately we decided to go with that a planned development was the most appropriate avenue to ask for that additional height rather than the others.

Yeah. Okay. I'm still you haven't convinced me yet. Me ask more questions. So are you saying you're going to modify PD81A with this entirely for just this one lot saying that that lot now is allowed to have 100 foot? Okay. Yeah.

Just Or this specific facility for, you know, that is masked as a tree that the 1980 planned development may not have considered a facility such as that and yes.

I mean, usually when we do things around this, there's some unique thing about the site that makes it, it's like, okay, really it's 45 feet high but from everywhere it looks like it's 40 feet or less because of the way this land is or you can't really use this parcel without this variation, but still meets the intent of we don't want anything here more than 40 feet high. And in this case we're clearly not meeting the intent of the original plan development standards. And as much as I appreciate all the work the applicant's gone through and make it look as nice as possible to have a 100 foot tower there, I mean, having a hard time finding a reasonable justification that doesn't defeat the intent of having development standards like this for an area to justify this project. So I'll just leave it at that for now. I guess I can do more

It during might be worthy of asking the applicant the exact same question, okay, so we get a better understanding of the use, and how they intend to use the poll. Any other questions for staff? Nothing now? Okay, thank you, Josh. All right, now we'll hear from the applicant. Which one of you would like to come on up? Please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your project and then you can answer questions.

Yeah, name is Everett Howard with SMUD, the project manager for large capital projects working on the Folsom Administrative Office Building. I think we can help out as far as the tower for this tower. This is a communications tower that communicates directly with SMUD's hydro facilities. Facilities. This also communicates down to our wind towers as well.

So that's our main use of this. For the tower itself we've actually the tower itself started as a lattice tower and we've actually progressed it to a monopie and work with the state parks who actually help facilitate what the development standards actually were. So we actually sat down, met with the state parks, coordinated with them in conjunction to help find a betterment and improve what the visual aspect and what the actual intent is of the overall planning development.

Anybody have any questions for the applicant? Did you have anything else you wanted to say besides for answering that question about the project?

I don't think someone has anything else. Unless there's any questions, we're

more So than happy to for purposes of transparency, I need to tell you I did meet with the applicant ahead of this. I wasn't asked by any opposition to meet, but I did meet with the applicant at their request. Go ahead, Commissioner Hurst.

For transparency, apologies. I also met with the applicant and had no other request to meet before this. I just wanted to follow-up on that. Put another way, there would be a loss of functionality the height were to be lowered on this tower. Is that correct?

There would be a tremendous loss in SMEDS function in running our facilities in critical emergencies to the region.

So, I guess, could you further expand on that in the sense that if this were not to be approved, what would the consequences of that be?

The facility itself or the tower?

The tower specifically.

The tower, it would not meet the functions to operate our power transmission. So as a form of communication, we would not be able to communicate to our hydro facilities nor any of our power gen facilities further down south. Thank you, chair.

Commissioner Barcelonago.

I just want to note that I met with the applicant as well and did not meet with the opposition, but I've reviewed all of their positions. And sorry not to see them here tonight. I had a number of questions. I do have one question for you. Absolutely. I did read the final three nineteen page CEQA document.

Congratulations. I know. Smite right.

It was

a big achievement in my day. I noted in there that when the hearing was held at at the SMUD meeting, last fall, parks did state parks did raise questions. And what I gleaned from it is that they did end up meeting with you, and there is a statement in the sequent document that said that state parks has no further objection once they've seen the mitigation measures.

Correct. We

actually That

is correct.

We we responded back to, we sent all our comments back to the applicants. We didn't hear back and we did not hear anything back from the state parks. We did hear, we did sit down formally with the state parks and the Bureau of Reclamation, managing the facility and they did not have any comments from our review of them of what our plan intent is before we submitted our revised MND.

And they did see the designs for the monopine?

They did.

Yeah. Okay, thank you.

Any other questions for the applicant? Okay, hearing and seeing none, thank you very much. All right, before we go to, Commissioner discussion, are going to open the public comment period. Is there anybody here who would like to address the Commission on this item number one? Okay. Hearing and seeing none, we are going to close public comment. Commissioners, it's, for us to, discuss. Commissioner West.

Okay. And I will again emphasize, I appreciate the applicant doing all this mitigation work to make it as nice as possible for something of that size. I'm just having a hard time justifying that we're essentially ignoring the development standards in this area. I know that their tower won't work if it's not that tall. But if they bought land in an area where they knew they couldn't build something more than 40 feet tall and they want to build 100 foot structure, I don't think it's our responsibility to ignore our planned development standards to meet that business need.

And that was not something that was secret. It was not something that was unknown to the applicant before they went through all of the effort of this project. And so if it gets approved, I'm happy that there's been mitigation done so it won't be as impactful. I see a justification for ignoring the planned development standards that were clearly stated for decades for this area.

Okay. Thank you, Commissioner West. Anybody else?

I'll just, explain my review a little bit, and see if there's any questions that come out of that. I noted in the, Lake Forest Technical Center Development Standards, paragraph 17 for special exceptions, which stated the planning commission may issue a use permit when it finds that there exists circumstances in the nature of the use or its special design needs that make strict enforcement impractical or out of character with the intent of the standards and that the design of the project is consistent with the intent of these standards. I think that gives us enough leeway for an exception in this instance. I think the mitigation measures have been pretty thorough. I went to the site three times, which was a little bit of overkill.

But I counted 50 sequoias in the tech Lake Forest Technical Center that exceed 75 feet in height. Mature sequoias reach a 100 feet. I my only question would be maybe there's additional mitigation that could occur through the use of more sequoias, so it would blend in. Actually, having seen all of the materials and the projections of the location of the monopine, I don't have a concern that it's not going to blend into the area or that it's gonna present some type of an eyesore that would interfere with enjoyment of the Lake Natoma public areas. So with that, I'm inclined to proceed.

Thank you, Commissioner Barcelona. Before I say anything, Commissioner Herz, do you have anything? Okay. I don't feel the same level of sensitivity as you, Commissioner West, and largely for the reason Commissioner Barcelona mentioned. It's just because I also went over there and there are some tremendous trees in that area.

In some cases, a building with a tree pretty much right next to it that looks I mean, of course, don't have a way to measure it, but it was a very, very tall pine looking building, which is probably a sequoia. You know, that gave me comfort that the thing is not going to be horrific, you know. And so I feel like I could approve this because of that, because it does pretty much fit in even though the standards are old. Don't know, obviously we regulate the height of trees, but I think some of them are approaching the height that this one would be. So to me that made it a lot more palatable.

So unless there are other questions, I think I mean I'm happy to make a motion to get something on the floor. Commissioner Reynolds, Reynolds, I was

just going to mention an oversight on my part in creating helping staff to create the recommended action. If the commission, if someone were to move approve, we would need to just add a little bit of language to the beginning of the motion to comply with CEQA guidelines section 15,050. And I could just read it into the record. It does relate to CEQA for your interest. We would just add move to certify that the Planning Commission reviewed and considered the information contained in the mitigated negative declaration on the project. And then the second piece would be

Okay, and move to

And then everything that's listed there.

And move to confirm then I'm going to do it. Okay. And move to confirm staff's determination that no further environmental review of the SMUD Administrative Operations Building and Communications Tower project is required and approve a planned development permit and conditional use permit for the project located at 102 Woodmere Road, MSTR 20 Five-seventy 4, based on the findings included in the report, findings A through Q and subject to the attached conditions approval, conditions one through 55, with the addition of an amendment to modification to attachment nine to include the updated web link, website link. So there's a motion on the floor. Commissioners, is there a second?

Second.

Commissioner Her seconds. Any discussion on the motion?

I'll just add one more piece. I think Folsom enjoys an advantage because we have SMUD versus PG and E for our electrical power. I think that helps the economics of the city. I think it it helps maintain a level of public safety as well. I think the tower contributes to that element of public safety and that's really what swayed me in in terms of what my decision will be.

Thank you, Commissioner. Appreciate that. Anybody else? Okay. Hearing and seeing none, Stephanie, please call the roll.

Commissioner West? No. Commissioner Barcelona? Aye. Commissioner Hurst?

Yes.

Commissioner Reynolds? Yes. Commissioner Herrera? Recused. Commissioner Laney? Recused. Commissioner Morales? Absent. Alright.

The motion passes. So congratulations, SMUD. Thank you for doing business in Folsom, and good luck to you. The next item is our planning manager's report. Principal planner's Let me make sure I get that right about our July weeks, three weeks. I know.

Go right ahead. Yeah. So principal planner report, next planning commission meeting is scheduled for July 16. I don't know if any of the commissioners in attendance tonight, if you know you're going to be absent or not, please let us know. We do have one item that we're expecting for that hearing.

It's the Russell Ranch townhomes. We were hoping to get it on this month. That that didn't happen, so, we're shooting for July. And then, the last two months, staff has approved 14 design reviews. Those have included two custom homes, seven residential additions or modifications, three residential accessory structures, and two accessory dwelling units.

I wanted to note that, we have a revamped pending projects web page. It was part of the city news, actually, last week. It includes information on major projects that are coming through for review, including submittal materials for the large ones. So that is potentially a tool you could use if people are interested in a project that looks like it's coming to the Planning Commission. You can point them to that page.

It's just if you go to the, planning division's page, it's the pending projects. And then, finally, the Harrington Grove Apartments, that is an affordable housing, complex is scheduled to break ground either next week or the week after. And so we should have another affordable housing complex on its way to getting some more residents in. And that is the principal planner report. Thank you.

All right. Thank you very much. Anything else under the good of the order?

I may have a problem getting here for the July meeting. I'm going to be out on the East Coast and I'm trying to arrange a flight that'll get me back in time, but I may not make it.

Okay. Well, we'll see how we're doing because if we've got only one item, we might be okay with even if you can't make it. Commissioner Hurst?

I know I will not be there. I will be elsewhere in the country, but I live close enough I was probably going to have to recuse myself anyways. So if I was here, I probably still couldn't come.

Oh, okay.

This will be interesting because I will be at Boy Scout camp with my son, so I will not be here.

All right. So we will poll the rest of the commissioners to find out if we'll have a quorum because I do know that I am available that night. So we will figure that out. And, appreciate all of you disclosing that so that we can work on that. So very good. Anything else? Okay. Hearing and seeing none, the meeting

is

adjourned at 07:07