Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

You, will you ever come on? If I just

Good evening. I'd like to call this meeting of the City of Goleta Planning Commission to order for 02/09/2026. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. Could we get a roll call of the planning commission, please?

Commissioner commissioner Maynard?

Present.

Commissioner Penningman? Here. Commissioner Sorokin? Is absent. Vice Chair Miller? Here. And Chair Fullerton is absent.

It's now time for the public forum. At this time, the public shall have an opportunity to comment on any non agenda item relevant to the jurisdiction of the city. Do we have any comments for public forum?

I have no speaker slips. For those of you on the Zoom webinar who wish to speak on a non agenda item, please use the raised hand icon and I will call on you. I have no comment for public comment, Chair.

Thank you. Director Imhoff, do we have any amendments or adjustments to the agenda?

Madam Chair, we do not.

Okay, thank you. We will now go to item A1 of the agenda. Could you please read the item into the record?

Yes, thank you, Chair. That's item A1, approval of the Planning Commission meeting minutes of 01/26/2026.

Okay. Do we have any comments or discussion on this item? Seeing none, do we have a motion to approve the minutes?

May I ask for a public comment, please, Chair?

Oh, yes.

Thank you, Chair. Any member of the public wishes to speak to this item, please use raised hand icon and I will call on you. And I have no comment for this item. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Do we have a motion to approve the minutes?

I can make a motion. I make a motion to approve the Planning Commission meeting minutes of 01/26/2026.

I second.

Roll call vote, please.

Thank you, Chair. Commissioner Maynard? Aye. Commissioner Pindeman? Aye. And Vice Chair Miller?

Aye. We now go to Item B1 of the agenda. Could you please read the item into the record?

Yes, thank you, Chair. That's item B1, General Plan Coastal Land Use Plan 2025 Progress Report and finding the report is exempt under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Okay. And we have a presentation.

Vice Chair, Miller and Planning Commissioners, my name is Andy Newkirk, supervising planner. I'll give part of the presentation tonight, assisted by Molly Cunningham, an Assistant Planner with us in Advanced Planning. This presentation will be pretty brief. The report is fairly lengthy, but it is a report explaining what has been done so there's no kind of new action as part of the report. Before I get in, I want to kind of mention a few things.

We do this every year and it's a collaborative effort citywide. We actually reach out to colleagues starting in November to get this packet to you by early February. So it takes a lot of work just kind of compiling both all the efforts of all the different divisions and departments within the city and then also compiling the housing data for the year. So it's a pretty big lift. And it's actually this is the first year we've actually gotten kind of mass email solicitation from a consulting firm offering to provide assistance with the annual progress report.

It's become that big of a lift, particularly on the housing front, that it's now I've been working on these for about ten years, probably for the city. And every year, it's more and more information we need to provide in these reports. So, they're getting longer and longer over time. So, it is quite a big lift for, really, City Hall to get this compiled and into the state by April 1 of each year. I did also want to note that there's an errata for tonight.

I'll explain later kind of how that came about. But we'll ask and we'll reiterate this at the end that should you choose to follow the staff recommendation to move this report on, to do it with the errata, which are really just minor tweaks to some of the housing data. So, just explaining a little bit what this report is all about. The annual report is required by state law. It's part of the government code, the planning law for the state that we have to do in this annual progress report every year.

Sometimes we refer to it as APR, another acronym to be aware of. We'll try to avoid it. We often refer to this as the APR. So the purpose of the report is really kind of a status update on the general plan in large part. And kind of the way we report out is how our status of the implementation actions in the general plan.

And for most elements, those are kind of three to seven actions at the end of the element, kind of how we're going to kind of follow through to implement the policies within that element. And then the housing element, it's kind of everything. And so that's kind of the main thrust of the report itself. The other kind of big component is really our housing data and how we're doing meeting our RENA targets. That's the regional housing needs allocation.

So that's housing units at different affordability levels. We're in the sixth planning cycle and we have to we're trying to meet our targets on these different kind of affordability levels and we'll show you the status of that later on in the report. And so, those are kind of the big pieces of the report. And again, our presentation is pretty short tonight. The report itself has a lot of detail in it.

We'll post it online. We post every one of these progress reports online. But kind of why we're here in February and why we're planning to go to council in March is we have to submit this report to the California Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate and Innovation. And I'm looking at the screen because that is a new title. Some of you may be familiar with the Office of Planning and Research, OPR, that has been rebranded as the Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation, so it's really the same entity as what used to be known as OPR, and to the Department of Housing and Community Development.

So we have to get those as part of the government code requirements, we have to get those in by April 1. So that's why we're here in February to make sure we get in front of a quorum of Planning Commission and City Council before that April 4 deadline. So, with that, I'm going to pass it over to Molly Cunningham to give a couple of the updates on general plan amendments and some of the implementation actions and then I'll report back on some of the housing data.

Good

evening. First, I'm gonna go through some of the general plan amendments that were adopted in 2025. So the first was Los Granaris Business Park, which had a land use change that went from office institutional to business park. And then the second amendment was general plan amendments to implement state law requirements and this included changes to the open space element and the safety element as well as additions of general plan policies throughout the general plan that kind of went through all the elements and then also in 2025 two amendments were initiated the first being the Goleta Business Park which had a land use change from general commercial to business park and then 33 South La Patera Lane which had a land use change from business park to office institutional. Also in 2025, a couple amendments were pending, so that means they were initiated prior to 2025.

And there's a list of five here. I won't go through all of them, but here are the five that were initiated prior to 2025, but no action was taken on them within the year. Now, we'll highlight some of the implementation actions throughout each of the elements. So starting with open space we have OSIA five which is preparation of individual park development and or management plans so the first part of this that we want to highlight was the phase one of the Stowe Grove Park improvement project and included in this was the final selection of the playground design and selection for the location and design of the all access restroom facilities and also within this implementation action item was the Elwood Mesa Butterfly Grove community volunteer days which is where the city hosted volunteers who helped plant trees and native plants, as well as do some plant management like irrigation, clearing out some brush and fallen eucalyptus, and other things like that. And then for the housing element we wanted to highlight he 3.1 f which is infrastructure improvements specifically within the Old Town District and this includes project connect which is includes the Hollister Avenue Bridge and Equal And Fowler Street expansions as well as the San Jose multi purpose path project which will construction began on in 2025 and it will create a direct continuous route for cyclists and pedestrians from Calle Real to Old Town and to the existing Itascadero Creek Bikeway.

So, in terms of housing units tracked, in the report itself, they'll be pretty hard to read. You'll have to zoom in in the PDF. But Appendix C to the report has very detailed, very, very detailed information about project applications, building permits submittals, building permits issued, certificates of occupancy. Kind of every which way you can measure housing is in Appendix C to the report. Within the report itself, we just showed a few highlights that are a little more digestible.

So the first, we include in the report kind of two ways we track housing. One is building the finaling of a building permit, which is the we consider a certificate of occupancy. So that's actual new housing units that are now available for someone to live in. So that's what you see on this table. So in 2025, we had 29 total units added.

I think all but one were ADUs, accessory dwelling units. And you can see on here there's a little asterisk with the very low and low. One of the corrections we have in the errata, I think in the report as it was presented in the agenda, it was 19 very low units and seven low units and we had one of those wrong. So, we had to just correct those numbers. So, these would be the errata numbers, just to be clear.

So, again, you see kind of that 29 total units and the affordability levels are generally derived by estimated rent or that they're for like a family member, like a granny unit, grandparent, child, that kind of thing. The other way that we report housing units in the report and then also to the state is tracking our total towards Rina. So we have a bigger number here because of Heritage Ridge. And these units, this is based on the building permit issuance, which is really kind of the last approval the city has other than kind of the inspection process. And that's how units are counted towards your housing cycle numbers.

So all the building permits for Heritage Ridge were issued in 2025. So you see a big number of low and above moderate really derived from that single project. So you can kind of see how significant Heritage Ridge is towards our totals. And one thing of significant note is we are more than halfway to our arena target for the housing cycle in above moderate. So there'll be some that's kind of a significant category in terms of whether projects in the future can qualify for streamlined processing or not.

But you can also see particularly moderate, very little progress has been made as part of these housing numbers. And I'll note at this point the errato, they're really fine tuning for the most part that appendix C to the report. Appendix C is PDFs of an Excel form that is provided by HCD for us, the State Department of Housing and Community Development, for us to fill out. And we have to submit that spreadsheet essentially to the state. They actually reviewed our spreadsheet in advance of our submittal and gave us feedback.

So, the errata is derived from they gave us kind of four comments. And so, the errata is just derived from the comments we received. So, it's a good thing because we feel more confident that now when we submit it, it'll meet their expectations. So, just a couple of highlights. I already mentioned Heritage Ridge, that's a really big number in terms of below market rate units.

It's the largest project in the city's history, eclipsing Villa Los Carneos, is, I think, 70 below market rate units. So really significant both in total number of units but also in those below market rate categories. One thing to note is we saw less ADU applications come in in 2025. We've kind of seen really since like twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen a consistent increase in the number of ADUs coming in and we saw that drop. So I'm actually not sure if we'd call it a trend yet because it's just one year, but something we'll be interested to see what the numbers look like next year, what happens with those ADUs as they've been kind of the steady base number of new units annually the last several years.

And then one thing in the report, and you don't see a lot of numbers, but we've seen a lot of inquiries and kind of we think we're kind of on the cusp of seeing quite a few housing projects move forward. Obviously, with the housing element, there were these rezones that gained a lot of interest. We really haven't seen any of those move forward towards entitlement yet, but we're really seeing a lot of serious inquiries, pre applications, that kind of thing, where we're starting to see some of those projects really take shape towards applications. So we think in the coming years, we'll probably see more of those rezone projects start coming in. And we really haven't seen that yet in terms of the RHNA table.

That hasn't really kicked in yet. So, that's going to be our presentation. Again, there's a lot more information in the report and we post them every year. But what we're asking from Planning Commission is to essentially move this forward to the city council and then eventually towards submittal to the state by that April 1 deadline. And we ask that should you make a motion based on staff's recommendation, you also include the errata and we'll make those changes in the report. So, what the council will see is kind of an updated version of the report with those changes. And we're happy to answer any questions you may have.

Do commissioners have any questions? No questions. I have a question about one of the slides for the general plan amendment. And that is the one under the pending general plan amendments. Could you please explain both what the pending general plan amendment is for Kenwood Village and for the unaddressed parcel on Viejo Road land use change.

Could you just explain what those two items are, please?

Sure. The Kenwood Village, it's a holdover from when it was previous that got changed. The land use designation got changed with the housing element. This is essentially a holdover from a project like a decade ago for a different land use designation change. It just hasn't been withdrawn.

It just still exists. And so until a time where it's there's a true change, It's just kind of lingered out there, but it's a change from RS, single family residential and agriculture, I believe, to planned residential. The designation has been changed to something else since then, but there just hasn't been any actual formal change in the status of that general plan amendment. And, via Harrow, I might need to pull it up, what the exact change is. Give me one minute.

So, that proposal is to change from general commercial to either business park or office and institutional. And just to be clear, any pending GPA, it's initiated by council, so PC doesn't involve the initiation, but any subsequent amendment would come back through Planning Commission on a recommendation to council.

Any other questions at this point? Okay. Do we have any public comment on this item?

Madam Chair, I have no speaker slips. For those of you on the Zoom webinar, please use the raised hand icon if you'd like speak to this item. I'm seeing none. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. So, do we want to do I close the public hearing? I'd like to close the public hearing then, and then I would like to see if we want to move into deliberations on this one. Commissioner Peneman.

I agree that the slide deck does not represent the amount and the quantity in this report. It is a big report. The city did a lot this year and it was great to see it all put down in one place, but it was a lot. I don't know when that report's available, but if it's possible to get it maybe a week before the meeting or earlier. It was a lot to go through and and, you know, since Wednesday. But, but I'm sure a lot of work went into it too, but having a couple more days would be good. Otherwise, no, it looks great. And, yeah, that's it. Thank you.

Commissioner Maynard.

I'm continually impressed by the city and how much work you all do both in terms of putting the proposal together, but just the work that was represented by this report that every department of the city has done over the past year and for many years before that. So congratulations to everybody, all the staff here that are represented and listening in today for all the amazing work you all do. I would like to move forward with a motion, if that's acceptable.

Yes, please. If you could also include the errata. Thank you.

So I'd like to make a motion to adopt the resolution number 26 dash underscore entitled Resolution of the Planning Commission of the City of Galita, California recommending to the City Council approval of the general plan slash coastal land use plan 2025 progress report for submittal to the governor's office of land use and climate innovation and California department of housing and community development, inviting the report to be exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act with the errata provided with the staff report this evening.

Do we have a second?

I'll second that.

Roll call vote, please. Commissioner Maynard?

Aye.

Commissioner Pendeman? Aye. Vice Chair

Miller? Aye. The ayes have. We now will go into our public workshop for this evening, which is the local coastal program workshop number four. And, we have the staff that will give us the presentation.

And that is item C1, Local Coastal Program Workshop four. Thank you.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Vice Chair. If you're ready, I'll start the workshop. Welcome to the fourth workshop for the city's local coastal program or LCP, if we slip up and have an acronym mistake. I am the advanced planning manager, Ann Wall, and I am joined by Andy Newkirk, supervising planner, Cam O'Draw and Molly Cunningham, assistant planners in advanced planning and Rachel Hollander, who's our consultant from assisting us with this project. And then we also have two staff from Public Works, Nina Buena is the Public Works Director, and Teresa Lopes, who is the Principal Engineer.

And they'll be supporting us throughout if you have questions specific to those items, which many are affecting public works programs. So I think for each of these workshops, I've mentioned that this is a collaborative effort affecting everyone here at City Hall because we're talking about our general plan, which is the equivalent of our constitution for Galita. So when we change it, we like to include everyone internally. And you can see that we've done that here, where we pull in the people who really have the most is affected by these things and can answer your questions where we might not be able to. And again, we are talking tonight about some draft edits that the Coastal Commission staff have proposed to help us bring a local coastal program forward to the Coastal Commission itself as an application so we can have our first ever certified local coastal program, which will allow us to issue coastal development permits in the coastal zone.

A few administrative items that I want to flag is we have the comment cards and maps and other materials over at the table over there. If anybody in the audience has questions, feel free to ask Molly or Cam or Rachel. You can just tap them, and they'll answer your questions if you have any. There's some snacks as well, so help yourself. And then we also have comment cards.

Feel free to fill out comment cards, and we will catalog those as public comment. And as a reminder, if you do have public comment and you want to provide that to us in an email, then use our email address, and that's lcpcityofgalita dot gov. And let's see. And we do have page for the project and all of our workshops staff reports and links to the video are included on that project web page And we'll have a link, I think, up if I kept it in there, I can't remember. If we can switch to the next slide.

So our workshop agenda is the same as the previous three workshops, and that's just starting with presentation focusing on the topics for tonight. And we'll ask you specific questions for each topic, and then we'll do this iterative feedback from Planning Commission in public, and that will conclude with you giving us direction on the questions, and then we'll move on to the next item. And then we'll conclude the workshop with the next steps for the LCP project as we have been. All right. And as a reminder, we're going to share the feedback that we've received from the public and from the commission with the Coastal Commission staff.

So that will happen next. All right, I think we kind of talked about the project updates with the three workshops, the first one in December, two in January, And here we are. There's the email and the website for the local coastal program project. Lots of material on there, and there'll be more uploaded in the future. Next slide.

So

the list of items on the screen are the topics that we've covered. We've come far, right? We've covered ARC and paleo, environmentally sensitive habitat, oil and gas, public access, safety or coastal hazards, and visual resources. And now tonight and I think we can get through it is public facilities and transportation and water quality. So we'll just jump right into the next slide.

And we can turn to the next slide, which Andy will be presenting on this item.

So the first topic we have in the staff report is really two tables, public facilities and water conservation. Didn't think water conservation didn't have its own kind of driving coastal act requirements. And a lot of the water conservation elements, some of them are really related to groundwater and water, like maintaining water availability. So we felt like it kind of tied in with some of the other concepts in public facilities. So that's why these two are kind of lumped together in the presentation.

So the coastal act requires that kind of new public works facilities are designed to to be scaled with kind of essentially the build out and growth envisioned in the coastal land use plan. And then also, where there's limited amount of, facilities to accommodate growth that certain uses be, kind of essentially prioritized or not precluded because of other development. One thing I wanted to note is, and this isn't in the staff report, public works is a defined term. So if you're if you're wondering like, what does it mean to be a public works facility? Public works is pretty broad, to include things like water and sewer service and roads.

So those are some of the kind of the key ones, but it's kind of all your utilities and accessibility, all those things. So it's a pretty broad term, but it is defined in the Coastal Act. And I also want to note that as part of the general plan analysis of build out, public services and utilities are analyzed for adequacy for build out. So this is something that's already considered in the general plan at that kind of broad build out level, that there's adequate services like sewer capacity, water capacity, those types of things, right? That's baked into the development of the general plan to begin with.

So I do wanna to kind of highlight that at that kind of macro scale that is part of the analysis that's embedded within the general plan. And also that in Title seventeen, one of the common findings for all approvals is adequate services so that we can have that macro look in the general plan and then for each entitlement we ensure that there's adequate services. One of the other provisions of the Coastal Act also prioritizes certain uses and actually highlights specific uses that those priority uses have priority over. And one of them that is worth flagging is that one of those non high priority uses, shall we say, is housing, is residential. And so that's kind of a little bit of a jarring thing with all the work that we do to support housing and our housing element and our housing programs and even the things we just talked about with meeting our arena targets and kind of emphasizing housing, it is kind of strained comparison.

It's something I think someone brought up even last workshop is how do some of these provisions tie in with you know, the housing mandates and it's like, yeah, sometimes it's not totally neat and something that we'll have to wrestle with moving forward. But we don't have any kind of topics to flag under either public facilities or the water conservation in part because the language is pretty clear. There is some heartburn about the priority over residential, but that language is right here in the COSOL Act itself, so that's just something that we'll have to deal with. How priority gets dealt with on a project specific basis, and we do have the existing finding about adequate services, whether that will have to get modified in some way, we're not totally sure of. That will be something that will have to get either clarified or not within the implementation plan, but so there may be further consideration of the significance of this provision.

But we did not flag anything in particular because there is this prioritization concept within the Coastal Act itself. So some of those edits that are proposed in the tables do really tie back in to the Coastal Act language. It's just the Coastal Act language is a little bit at odds with some of our housing priority policy emphasis. So it's kind of it is what it is in a sense. So we don't have any specific questions for you to guide the conversation, but we didn't want to totally jump over this and offer up an opportunity to provide any feedback for city staff to consider moving forward regarding public facilities.

So, are you ready now for us to ask questions at this point?

Yeah, at this point, just

Just for this?

On public facilities, any questions you have, and then see if there's any public comment.

Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. Commissioner Maynard.

I know I sent some of these questions via email. Had time, but just to put it onto the public record and ask some of the questions here. So, in the language that the Coastal Commission recommended that we change in our general plan, they use some language that talks about prioritizing who's allocated water and saving a certain amount of water for certain types of land uses. And question that I guess came up for me is really trying to understand our role as a city in comparison to the Galita Water District. So typically in the past, it seems like the Galita Water District determines whether they give a permit and then if water rights are granted when the project comes to us as Planning Commission we would look and say do you have your water rights?

And if they have their water rights we'd say great, water is available and we'd count it as for that project. To what extent are we determining who gets a water allocation? What is our role here in comparison with the Water District?

So Commissioner Maynard, I think you kind of you explained it fairly accurately and and kind of broadly speaking, right? We are not a full service city. We don't have our own sewer management. We don't manage water. Those are, you know, Galita West and Galita Sanitary District and Galita Water District all have service within the city, right?

And we're typically deferential to their ability to serve development. And yet with water, typically as a submittal requirement for an application, there's a provisional water availability letter. It's not a grant of water right at that point. The water district wants to see the local entitlement first. So, there's kind of a three step process where there's like, yeah, there's water available, we process, and once they're entitled, water district just gives the water allocations as entitlements come to them.

So there isn't a prioritization process with the Water District. They are limited in total acre feet per year that they can give out. So there is that limitation. It's quite a bit of water at this point. But theoretically, you could hit that maximum within a year and then a project would have to wait till the next year's allocation. So again, they don't have a prioritization process and we're deferential to them on whether a project will get access to water.

And I'll add to what Andy just said that when we adopted our general plan, then we have to make findings that there's adequate services to support build out. And so, did, and we used Glitter Water District gave us their water supply assessment and their urban water management plan, and that's what we use to evaluate that there is enough water. They're regulating of the water and the meters that, you know, how they allocate their water each year, their permits. That's a policy call. So when we've even suggested to the state, HCD, Housing and Community Development, that when they review our housing element, that there's some challenges with ensuring that projects can be built as quickly as the state wants to build the housing projects, because we go to the safe ordinance and cite that.

They don't see that as a constraint, because the water's there. It's just a policy decision that's being made by the water district. So, as far as the prioritization, we're not exactly sure if there's an issue there with the Coastal Commission when it's a policy call. We don't think so, because it says to adequate services are provided and we we have that determination when in our general plan adoption so I just wanted to clarify that

thank you very much that's all my questions on this section at this time

I don't believe there's any other commissioner questions at this point. Can we move to public comment on this item, please?

Yes, thank you. I have no speaker slips. Any of you on the Zoom webinar wish to comment on this question? Please use the raised hand icon, and I will call on you. I'm seeing none.

Thank you. So, we now can move to the next item. Or do we ask the question?

Usually, at this stage, we might take comments from the planning commissioners. So the first stage was questions from the planning commissioners, and this would be comments.

Comments. Thank you.

Yes. I guess, should I do my comment?

Yes, please. Thank you,

Commissioner Maynard.

Generally, I don't have significant concerns here. My only concern would just be clarifying our role and if some of the language, particularly in 4.1 or 4.2, gives an impression that we have a broader role than we have. So that would be my only concern here. Otherwise, I don't have additional comments at this time.

Commissioner Panama?

Yeah, no additional feedback on this one.

I would just like to concur with Commissioner Maynard on this that, you know, we talked to the or we have you explain to the Commission that this could be a testy issue coming up if we don't have further clarification on it. Thank you. Now, I think we can move to the next item.

Okay, so that brings us to the transportation policies. And I'll cover those. So the guiding coastal act section is 30,252. It's on the screen. It's a lot. So I'm going to distill it down to you. It basically states that new development should support public access. So that's the key thing here And it's more than this, but what's kind of applicable to Goleta is facilitating transit service, providing supporting commercial facilities, and providing for parking and public transportation. So kind of the theme here is minimizing vehicle trips, right? Doing everything you can to minimize vehicle trips is the highlight.

And so the edits that well, let's talk about Complete Streets versus Vision Zero. Currently, the Vision Zero principles guide the city's planning efforts and our transportation planning efforts. And that was from the city council adoption of Vision Zero efforts in 2024. And that was through adoption through a resolution. And that is to eliminate fatal and severe transportation related collisions through planning, design, street maintenance, sidewalks, and public right of way projects.

So that I'm just kind of highlighting some of the essential parts of Vision Zero that can be elaborated, if you need it to, with our public work staff. And I thought it's really important to note that the general plan has multimodal policies. TE 1.3 is an example, TE 1.4. And we also have an adopted bike and ped plan. And the Vision Zero principles basically work with these programs complementary.

And the Coastal Commission staff proposed revisions use a complete streets principle. And that is to guide the design of streets to be safe for all uses and inclusive of all modes, which is a pretty strong language when it says all uses, all modes. And it is applicable to everything, including maintenance, pavement. But they do say we're appropriate in a couple places. So I think that's important to flag.

So that's kind of the Vision Zero, the complete streets. Safety is a theme in both, And they're just a little bit different. And one, the Coastal Commission's edits, just a little bit more specific on the language for all uses and all modes. So shifting from Vision Zero to Complete Streaks could impact public works projects, specifically the paving projects. And some of these requirements might have design implications when they're just repaving a road, because all users all modes might require a redesign that you can ask public works questions about that when we get there in the staff report you'll see that public works did propose adding a new policy to the general plan that would be an alternative to the Complete Streets concept.

They would articulate that Vision Zero effort. And I won't read that to you. It's in the staff report. I kind of touched on it when I explained in kind of simplistic words what Vision Zero was. So that's the highlight on that one there.

And then the removal of capital projects so right now, we have policy in the general plan under policy TE5. And that lists out the capital projects that are needed to serve our build out, or the future growth of the city, and maybe more specifically to address intersection, congestion. I'm sure the transportation engineers in the room are like, oh, the congestion word. But that's sort of a more applied way, like visualizing it. And what the Coastal Commission staff proposed were to remove these capital projects in TE5 where they occur in the coastal zone, not just in the whole city.

And I'll explain what that means to us. But the reason that they had was to avoid the perception that we're doing pre approvals of projects when there was an analysis for the impacts on coastal resources. And of course, our projects all go through environmental review with alternatives analysis, etcetera. But they are specific when you look at what intersections break when you run a model, and then what improvements you need. There's usually not a ton of options, but they're not always exactly how they look in the general plan by the time we get to building them, so I'll just flag that.

But there's three specific sub policies that are proposed to be removed, and that would be TE 5.2, and that's the Cathedral Oaks Hollister interchange project. That's already completed, so it's not particularly relevant here if we were to take that out. TE 5.3 is Ecklefowler, the South Kellogg improvements. Some of that is under construction now, some of it isn't. And TE 5.7 is the Phelps Road connection that would be removed.

And it doesn't mean that we wouldn't be working on these projects. It's just the removal from the general plan has a couple possible implications that we would have to look at. And that is our general plan environmental impact report evaluated the impacts of build out, and it needed mitigation where things were significant, impacts were significant. Transportation was one of them, and these improvements mitigated so self mitigating mitigated the impacts of broken intersections from build out of the general plan. And so we don't know what that would mean, if anything.

I mean, the one that was already constructed, obviously, that's not really on the table for the discussion. But the other thing is, the Planning Commission under government code section 65,401 has to make general plan conformity determinations for capital projects before the budget is adopted each year. So, you'll see that in May or June, and you'll make the findings. And it's much easier to make a finding that a capital project is consistent with the general plan when the project is listed in the general plan. So if we remove them, we will figure out another way, because we wouldn't be the only jurisdiction having to figure that out.

But we just wanted to flag that for you, not that it's impossible to make those findings. It would just be find a different way. So the next slide is public coastal access parking. And currently, you'll remember that our coastal access policies are in the open space element, and we discussed those at workshop two. And so that's the way we do our elements, transportation stuff's just really focused on the actual transportation.

Visual is in visual element, and open space is in open space. We keep it kind of clean from each element. And we had a lot of edits to the open space element, including to parking and coastal access that we discussed in workshop two. What the Coastal Commission staff are proposing here is to add a policy, a new policy, TE 9.8, and that and I'm going to really simplify it is to protect street parking for coastal access. That was their objective.

And then we just wanted to flag that when we shared this internally, we looked at the comment was that we are looking at regulating parking along Phelps, Marymount, and Whittier Drive during large events, like Deltopia and Halloween. And those are important parking control programs. There's temporary. And so that new requirement in new TE 9.8 could have some ramifications there if we were to have to mitigate for, like, a temporary lost parking. We don't the extent that we would have to do that, but we did want to just flag that, that there could be some challenges there.

Also, the city doesn't all of our parking in the coastal zone isn't curb and gutter with drainage provided. Some of it is unimproved road shoulder and kind of ad hoc parking. People just kind of park how they want, and they might be parking in habitat or next to habitat on dirt. So it affects runoff, and it affects a number of things. So our efforts, if we were to control drainage and storm water and improve that parking on the shoulder that is the public easement, the public right of way, We could be you know, there could be some challenges with the new revisions proposed by the Coastal Commission, because if the actual number of parking spots are reduced from what we could construct to meet our street standards, then we might be in a situation where we have to find additional parking somewhere else that's coastal access to offset that.

And that could just be expensive. And we don't know. We haven't done that, where we don't know how much parking would be available for us at alternative locations to make up for that parking. So we just wanted to flag that. We're not recommending anything here, but we just wanted to point it out to you.

And lastly, there's some mandates that are outside the city authority. And we currently use policies to advocate for certain outcomes outside of the city's direct control. And basically, that's saying with Caltrans and the Highway 101 And 217. And we do have some policies with very specific language on how we are advocate with Caltrans. And what the Coastal Commission staff are proposing are some revisions that really further that, where we don't have any direct approval and sending a message that maybe we do have more control over the projects than we do.

We already have that going on in our general plan, so it just takes it a little step further and adds in environmental justice policies that would be applicable to highways. And that might be kind of hard to address with Caltrans, but I don't think any of it's a deal breaker. But we're just flagging that those policies that we already kind of started doing that kind of advocacy in our general plan, just taking it out a little bit in more detail. To the next slide, we have five questions for you. The first two is, do you support the removal of capital projects from the coastal land use plan?

And then the third one is, do you support the complete streets sub policy? Or would you prefer the Vision Zero approach that is proposed by public works or some other alternative? And then, do you support the more stringent requirements regarding restrictions on or elimination of existing on street public parking for coastal access? And then the fifth one is, are you comfortable with the mandates for city involvement with projects that we don't have any control over the Caltrans projects I was referring to? Mandates might be a little bit of a strong word.

They do take it the wording is a little bit more prescriptive than ours, but you know. And then question six, is there any other feedback for us on these policies for transportation? Thank you.

We'll go to questions now. Commissioner Maynard.

Thank you so much. There's so much to talk about here, I'll try to jump right in. The first one, as we talk about Complete Streets versus Vision Zero, one component of Complete Streets or particularly the language the Coastal Commission recommended for Complete Streets that I didn't see in the Vision Zero alternative language was that Complete Streets includes being safe for all users and inclusive of all modes and all age groups where appropriate. I was wondering if Director Molina could talk a little to that and why it's recommended not to include that.

Commissioner Maynard, we're recommending not including it because it's not our policy. We follow the Vision Zero policy. And with Vision Zero, it recommends safety for all users, pedestrians, cyclists, bicyclists, and the vehicle users as well. And we also have to do all of our ADA standards upgrades as we do these projects, regardless of Vision Zero or not. So Vision Zero already encapsulates everything with complete streets. It's just not our policy. So I want to stick with what counsel's directed us to do.

Thank you. I think it's really interesting what was described about the unofficial parking spaces and what would it mean if we tried to officialize some of the parking spaces? So particularly on Phelps Road, there's a lot of dirt spaces that aren't really spaces. So with the new policy, do we have any sense of how Coastal Commission would treat that if we were to change parking restrictions along that there where there's really no official approved parking? Would it count as removing parking if the parking didn't really exist already? You kind of get what I'm saying there.

Yeah, well, that's why I had the question because I don't think the city should be penalized for removing parking when that's really not a parking area as prescribed by public works.

That one will be a recommendation. In terms of the environmental justice addition, transportation element 15. X, There's two recommendations here that the Coastal Commission made. One was TE 15. X. I'll just call it the first one, Environmental Justice Planning. And then there's a second TE 15. X, environmental justice impacts. There's also a third one around coastal trails and evacuation routes. I hear some of the concerns around the environmental justice impacts one.

They're asking for project alternatives and deep level of analysis. But would there be any concerns from city staff regarding the first recommended addition, environmental justice planning?

I'll start this off with the focus here is or one of the key concepts in this policy is populations near existing highways or proposed sites for highway development. It's like it's written for a bigger city than ours. But we've analyzed our disadvantaged communities in our housing element, and also when we did our environmental justice policies maybe a year ago or so. And those are now included in our general plan. The Coastal Commission staff didn't review that because we were meeting state law for the environmental justice policies while we were in review with them.

So the stars did not align. And so that's where so there's some overlap that doesn't line up. But the focus on these populations and highways and sites for highway development, that's just not the way we analyzed our population. We drilled it down to specific locations, and that's really an old town. So, I'll let the public work staff add to that as needed.

I'll also just add, I can pull it up, but we specifically highlighted where there's projects in Old Town to seek out input from the Old Town community, which is identified as a disadvantaged community. So some of this language about working with other groups to identify all these other groups that we'll incorporate in, we already looked at how we should best look at our disadvantaged communities. So it's this new process that these projects may have to undertake where we've already kind of committed to how we're going to look at, particularly in Old Town, impacts of capital projects. And we do have that new land use element policy about community engagement and how we're going to seek kind of engagement as part of our EJ update. So in a sense, I kind of feel like we've looked at kind of chartered a path forward.

And as Ann mentioned, these proposed edits were prior to the adoption of those policies.

And what's that new land use one that talks about the engagement? I'll give you few minutes.

It's LU13 or LU14. Cam,

if you have it accessible, you can just Cam was one of the project managers on that project.

You could also give it to me in a couple of minutes when you find it. I'll ask a few other questions in the meantime. But that's helpful. Thank you. Can you remind us so I remember when we were first starting to work on it, and Lita's a very young city. And when we first formed, the general plan was all we had. And so we did a lot of stuff in the general plan. They don't normally do it in general plan. And I'm wondering if having these really specific transportation projects named is kind of a vestige of that early process. So I guess my question is, is it common for most cities to name very specific transportation or construction projects in a general plan?

Or is that something we just kind of needed to do at the beginning, but do you anticipate us needing to do that in the future? Are we at that transition stage? That's kind of where I'm going with this.

Well, when we redo our general plan, the whole thing, we'll we'll look at deficiencies, new deficiencies based on new land use plan map and build out from that if there are changes. And then we will identify new possible projects. And putting them in the general plan has a lot of advantages when it comes to getting grants, and especially if they're written in such a way that there's like, you might have a signalization project replaced at the same location, but with a roundabout. And so we know where the location is going to be broken. And then we collect fees for that, and then we eventually build it.

So back in 2005, before we adopted our general plan, we identified these as projects. And we're doing them now. So I think what you're saying is, do cities do this? This is not uncommon. We're split with the coastal zone, so that's a different situation. And I'll let the public work staff I'll let Nina talk about the value or not that they have at a practical level of having these in our general plan.

And I guess just to clarify, too, I'm also thinking of, like, for anyone who's like in process, I feel like we should keep them in the general plan. But thinking ten, twenty years from now, do you see us still doing that practice is, I guess, what I'm hoping to get clarity on.

We will. We'll be doing it's called a Nexus and Development Impact B study. We're currently working on the update to our 2019 Nexus study, which develops the development impact fees. And one of those projects on there is Phelps Extension Project. So we would keep it in there because as we look at all the development that's happening around the city and within the city, it calls to do these projects. Because essentially what Anna is saying, we're breaking the system, so we need to then fix it to mitigate for what development is doing.

Thank you very much. I think those are my questions. I think everything else I have is comments, so I'll save those till after public comment.

Commissioner Remainder, to answer your question about the general plan policy with regards to target outreach to environmental justice communities. That is policy LU 13, civic engagement. Specifically, LU 13.1 is titled Community Driven Decision Making and has language about targeted outreach to our disadvantaged community.

Thank you. That really helps.

Go ahead, Commissioner Peterman.

Thank you. I just had a question, administrative question. Do you want to take these kind of one at a time, as we walk through them, take public comment, and then make our comments as we go forward? You know we did that last time it seemed to seem to work pretty well

I think it helps to ask all our questions and then go to public comment for the section. And then, when we answer, maybe we can go But slide by I think for now, it'd be good to get all the questions out before we do public comment as a whole for this section.

That sounds good. That sounds good. All right. Just a couple of questions. I guess this would be for Public Works. The all users and all modes in the Not Vision Zero plan, what is that how does that manifest? Like, if we were to repave a street today, would that look like? How would that affect just repaving a street, for example?

Commissioner Penman, that's a great question. I can give you many examples because we've just been repaving. If you look at Berkeley Road, we just paved Berkeley Road, and we added Vision Zero elements to that. So we didn't have the room to do its own bike lanes, so we added Sharos. And then we also reduced the lane size, so that way cars feel uncomfortable, so they drive the speed limit, which is 25 miles an hour.

The other thing we did with that project is all new ADA upgrades. So all the curb ramps in that whole corridor have been upgraded to the new ADA standards. So that's something that we would do with any project where we are doing resurfacing or repaving. We want to look at what Vision Zero approaches and policies we can add to those projects.

And how would that change with the program that Coastal Commission's purposes?

It would change because they're not following our policies by requesting us to do complete streets. I would say Vision Zero takes it a step further, because Complete Streets, just talking about providing access to everyone, Vision Zero does that, plus it's reducing fatalities and major collisions. That's, at the end of the day, the goal is to get to zero accidents, zero fatalities.

Which is a great goal.

I think so.

How would Berkeley look today if we had Smart Streets?

If we had what?

The Smart Streets program?

Mean Complete Streets?

Streets.

It would look the same.

It

would look the same, because we would still follow our Vision Zero. Actually, it wouldn't have share owes, and we probably wouldn't reduce lane widths.

Okay, all right. Thank you. I guess the other question I had was around the uncurbed parking around coastal parking like I assume that's over by Gersh Park where everyone parks to go during soccer days. I didn't quite get like what is the concern around that with the coastal parking changes that the Coastal Commission has requested?

So the coastal commission is saying that we have to make sure that we don't reduce any parking so I don't want the city to be penalized for removing parking there when there should not be parking there if that makes sense. We ever go back and, let's say, we do a sidewalk project, that parking would go away, but that parking should have never been permitted.

Right, right. Okay. I got it.

Commissioner Pendiman, just to be clear, this is again where you kind of got to squint your eyes maybe and look at the map on the wall. There are only a few right of way in the coastal zone over there. So right around Gersh Park is still is actually outside the coastal zone. It's just a few little segments, but there is some public parking and and regulate so there's some some cars that use it to park. And then there's also like the of Deltopia Halloween type of temporary restrictions that we place in that area. So that's those are kind of the two scenarios that we're flagging as potential challenges with the the proposed policy language.

And this is the, dirt area at the end of Phelps that's right off North Campus Open Space. So it's a little further from Gershebar.

Is there Cannon Green? End of Cannon Green

There's another area there, but the one on Phelps is, in particular, is all dirt. There's no actual parking spaces, but there's a lot of people park there. That's right as you're like you can walk into North Campus Open Space or Elwood from there. So the question is like, what's not a parking space? It's not an official parking space. Would removing that be removing parking if it's never been an official space, but it is something people park in? I think that's where the uncertainty comes from.

I see. Thank you. That's it for questions.

I have a question, as well, on the parking. This relates to the Elwood neighborhood parking, because there's that parking lot across from Elwood School, And a lot of people park there to go walking on the bluffs and the open space there. There's also the parking lot down at Hollister Beach by the Carra. So I'm just still confused about this idea that the Coastal Commission may or may not have that you talk about if we if they in other words, they're saying if we reduce parking on the street, then we may have to expand the parking lots? And I mean, are we just going to get into some sort of a I don't want to call it a shouting match, but just some sort of a disagreement with them at some point saying, well, we have to just expand those parking lots that already exist.

I mean, is that a possibility that if they're trying to allow people to have as much access to the coast, and I get that. But I'm just wondering, you know, with all the other problems we have with parking in the city, and especially if we get new housing, you know, there's a lot of street parking. There's a lot of street parking right over there, not on Hollister, but on the side streets for the Elwood Bluffs neighborhood. I mean, if the parking lot across from Elwood School is full, people park on the side streets over there. I don't think those side streets are actually in the Coastal Commission, but just creates a lot of confusion and could possibly create some distractions and some not very nice discussions later.

I don't know. What are your thoughts about any of that?

Well, I was going to say that the way they wrote our policy, it was the coastal act is pretty specific, too, about coastal parking, and keeping the public parking available. That's a right of the public in the eyes of the Coastal Act and a charge of the Coastal Commission. And so they're looking at all the public spaces that are available at coastal access locations. So maybe Santa Barbara Shores, at the end of Santa Barbara Shores Drive, where there's the gate to get onto Elwood Mesa. That's a pretty important access point.

And so the parking spots there, some of them are improved, some of them aren't. And the language is pretty specific, that we can't remove them. And if, for whatever reason, we remove them or reduce the numbers for whatever reasons, that we have to have a comparable number of replacement parking spaces, and it starts within the immediate vicinity. So, you can tell, like, what they're trying to do is keep those spots open to the public. And this works you know, this stuff applies, like, in Gaviota Ranch, for example, where these same policies are really holding on to parking spots for the public, where they might otherwise, for whatever real reason or maybe a nefarious reason, get taken away.

But there's some when you have these constrained circumstances in the city of Galita, where there's party parking and everyone's filling up a neighborhood. And we don't know for sure that the Coastal Commission won't work with us when it comes to working on zoning regulations that would allow for something like temporary events. We'd like to think that they would, but we don't know that yet. So that's why we're just flagging this one. It's important.

But the unimproved spaces, you know, where we need to do drainage improvements and protect habitat and make it safe at a sidewalk, right, like these kinds of things, that's where I think there's going to be some challenges with the way the policies are written. And finding so, Vice Chair, you mentioned the public parking spot at Elwood. Certainly, we couldn't take spots and make that like a concession booth, and lose parking spots for that without replacing them right there. So that's where they're trying to avoid situations like that, which I don't think we would do. But then it would embed that into our policy to make sure that we avoid that circumstance.

I think there are policies in our open space element, so there's some overlap there.

Any other questions from commissioners? Okay, can we go to public comment on this, please?

Yes, thank you, Chair. Those of you on Zoom webinar who wish to speak to this item, please use the raised hand icon and I will call on you. Seeing none for this section, Chair. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. So, are we suggesting now that we want to go through these questions one by one? Okay. All right. Commissioner Maynard, do you want to start?

Can we put the slide back up? That has the question. Question one, though. Do we have question one before this?

We start with two in this section.

Start with two. Okay, great, thanks. Okay. In terms of the capital projects being named in the COP, I think I could see sort of both sides of this argument. I would fight pretty strongly to keep any active projects or projects that are in the approval process in the COP.

I don't want to mess with the existing process we have for those active projects. I think that's most important to fight for. I would also want to see things that we put in as required mitigation stay in that. I thought that was a really compelling argument. For future projects and down the line for things that aren't mitigated, could see the Coastal Commission's view here.

And I think they make a decent point about it leaning us towards sort of pre approving projects. I can see that argument. So I would say I'm a little bit neutral on the future. But I would certainly fight strongly to keep mitigation projects and the active projects.

Commissioner Peneman?

Yeah, I agree with what Commissioner Maynard said. I'm wondering if we can add language to make it clear that these aren't pre approved. I do like the list. If we can keep it and push back on that, I see it as kind of like our guiding wish list of things that we want to get done. And, you know, everyone on staff knows what we want to get done, but I think it's really a good tool for new city council members as they come in who might not be as, you know, know the history of why we want these things and what projects we kind of have on the docket for the future. So, if we can keep it, that would be my recommendation.

Yes, I agree that we should have our running wish list available each year, so that they stay on there and stay relevant.

So question three is regarding Complete Streets and Vision Zero. I didn't feel that these needed to be one or the other. It was sort of presented that way. And I think that these are both valuable missions that can be blended together and not put as opposites. I do think that the staff made a really good point about complete streets not being applied to paving projects and minor rehabilitation projects.

I think that didn't make sense. We have a lot of paving projects and to build in a huge complete streets analysis on top of a basic annual paving project would make it impossible to keep up with paving. So I really appreciated that thinking about how far we want to go and when a Complete Streets analysis would be appropriate. So I think that's something that I would not agree with the Coastal Commission on. I think the thing that stood out to me about the Complete Streets language that the Coastal Commission recommended was that language of safe for all users and inclusive of all modes and all age groups.

And we don't really have as much language already in our general plan around the all age groups. I think that's really important. And so I like that inclusivity language and the all age language that's in the complete streets. So I would want to support Coastal Commission's recommendation there.

Yeah, I you know, it seems like Complete Streets is a subset. We already have a plan that kind of achieves this goal, it sounds like, and it's already in motion and approved by the city council. So, I'd recommend that we push back on that, see if that can stick.

I agree. I think we should definitely push back on that and stay with the Vision Zero mantra, because I think it's just really important. It's a good brand. I'd love to have that as vision zero for city brand for the city of Goleta. I just think it's very, very important. It's much more encompassing. Thank you.

For question four was around the stringent requirements regarding restrictions or elimination of parking. For this one, I do support the direction the Coastal Commission is going with it, but I think we have two really important clarifications and requests here that I think we should put in. I think we should make sure to clarify in the language that unofficial unapproved parking would not be subject to this new more stringent language around elimination of parking. And so it's not real parking, we shouldn't be penalized if we end up formalizing it. And in particular, I think that would actually help us get better parking in the long run.

You know, it's like there's some areas of those dirt parking lots that I could see us really putting a more formal parking space in there at some point. But it's inevitably going to have less spaces once we have to have the right spacing and the right drainage and such. So I think unofficial unapproved parking shouldn't be subject to this rule. I also think we should inquire with the Coastal Commission regarding special weekend restrictions and processes for that, such as was described with the Halloween events. Or Fourth of July at Gersh Park, like we have those types of events that we might have additional parking needs that we have in that area.

So I think that could be a conversation, but the general concept, the general direction coastal commission is going, I think is a good question for.

Right. I respectfully disagree about the unimproved parking spots. For me, when the Bakar went in, we lost a major amount of coastal access parking. That area has provided coastal access parking for generations to access well beyond the city as coastline, but that's about the only place you can get in legally. So, I think that unimproved parking spots that have historically been used for coastal access should be grandfathered in.

I think I am a proponent for coastal access parking.

Our

oceans and our beaches are a huge asset for our city. That said, so I am in line with the more stringent mandates or however requirements. But that said, there's a balance, right? So, there's resource protection. And so, I'm wondering if there are, you know, if we can carve out exceptions in the policy to, you know, address temporary resource protections for like snowy plover, nesting season, deltopia parties and also there was the conflict with the extra the parking requirements for ADUs which is kind of where the commission or the coastal act and the housing arena requirements kind of collide and wondering if like exceptions around those ADU parking not restrictions, but the opposite of those, if that can be an exception.

Parking for ADUs is not a loss of coastal access and then also having that temporary exception for resource protection and providing protection for overuse of the coast.

And, Chair, we do have a request to speak for this question. Is it possible to take public comment for this question?

Yes, please. Virginia

Gardner, if you'll take the podium, please. Have three minutes.

Good evening. Thanks for taking my comment. I think I might have missed the earlier window. I wanted to I I actually like the discussion that I'm hearing from miss Maynard and and mister Peneman. And I really think that miss Wells made a good kind of description for what the, coastal commission what what the intent is with that kind of parking restriction.

I would like to suggest as I did back when you had your public access workshop, that you consider putting together a coastal access management program where you would assess what your parking needs are in addition to all of your other lower cost visitor serving needs for public access. Mostly because that way you could look at some of these thorny issues and address them publicly and also with the commission and engage UCSB and, you know, the Isla Vista issues. But there's also grant funding. Not much now that NOAA's funding has been cut, and so therefore the Coastal Commission's funding has been cut also. But there are grants that can be obtained for things like coastal access planning, especially from the Coastal Conservancy.

And I really think that the city's done a great job of integrating the general plan policies. And so maybe transportation is the place for this aspect. But I do think you might want to think about it as part of your coastal access overall. So I just wanted to mention that because unofficial unapproved parking is often where people want to park and need to park, and that's how you identify where you need parking. So as an old recreation planner, you know, sometimes you can't formalize the informal parking, but if you can formalize it or provide it nearby, it's a good thing and trash cans. So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Any?

None at this time. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Well, I guess my take on this leans more towards what Commissioner Maynard says. I don't think that if parking is not allowed in these areas to begin with, I don't think that the Coastal Commission should make us keep it as official parking for access. Until such time as the city has the money, can get the grants, until you have the money to actually put more formalized parking in. Because, you know, just the constant dirt parking is really it's just terrible for erosion.

It's dusty. It just can be chaotic.

So

I would say no formal parking on those areas until they can be paved or improved and turned into more of a formalized parking situation. But, of course, that takes money. Thank you.

On question five, the way the question is phrased here, I do think it's important for us to clarify our role in jurisdiction and not to include recommendations from the Coastal Commission that go beyond our particular role or jurisdiction. Related to this, I would also note, TE 3.1 touched on visual resources, and I liked all the language in TE 3.1, but I'm wondering if it's redundant with our visual resources section. Similarly, TE 3.1 X coastal touched on an overlap with coastal hazards. Again, I think everything in that that was recommended by coastal commission terms of language looked fine. I don't have any concerns with what they recommended.

But I have a potential concern with duplication of another section of the general plan, and if there's an inconsistency between the two, if that's going to create issues for us down the line. So I liked what Ann Wells has said previously around kind of we have a way we structure the general plan to reduce duplication. And I hope we can keep some of that because I think duplication leads to inconsistency, which maybe gets into question six. But I do think staying clear about our authorities is valuable. I think this also touches on TE15.

X, some of the new environmental justice language that was recommended. And so I don't necessarily I think with TE15. X, environmental justice planning and environmental justice impacts, they are written in a way that leans really heavily into highways. And so my initial reaction with this is, well, these are really great ideas. They seem in line with what we've been trying to do with integrating environmental justice.

For folks in the audience, we did a project last year through general plan amendments where we actually integrated environmental justice extensively into the general plan through the twenty four-twenty five update. So it seems consistent with where the city was going. But the particular recommendations of Coastal Commission here lean in really heavily into highways, which is outside of our jurisdiction. So I understand that concern. So my original proposal was going to be, well, maybe we can keep some of this, but just take the highway language out.

But I was really moved by staff bringing up the LU-thirteen additions that were made last year, so that land use Section 13 that was added. They've got some good language in here about community driven decision making, bringing more, the city shall proactively seek and consider community input, encouraging all voices to be heard and valued with a particular focus on folks from Old Town. There's 13.3 looks at multilingual information, really making sure we're looking at language justice. There's some additional language in 13.4 about targeted outreach that touches on excluded historically excluded communities, youth, seniors, multicultural communities, and people living in Old Town. It goes on to talk about partnerships and representation.

So I think my response to Coastal Commission would be to really lean into that and to make sure Coastal Commission looks over the newest LU-thirteen civic engagement language and then kind of turn the question back on them of what's not already covered in the new LU13 that this new TE15.x would introduce. Because I think you've hit it with LU13 and so I'm okay not including the environmental justice planning, environmental justice impacts in TE because LU thirteen does everything that those two are recommending. But otherwise it would have fought for them if I hadn't seen LU thirteen. I like that you've already done it, essentially. Sorry, that was my answer.

Yeah, I don't have much to add than that. It did seem to answer the question directly, though, it does seem a little it didn't really make sense to exert our influence into areas where we don't have jurisdiction. That didn't quite make sense to me, so I'd leave that to staff to decide on.

Yeah, I don't have much to add either. I also think that staff should be the analyzers of that and figure out what's best.

I think I stuck my six answer into five, so I'm good.

Anything on six, Commissioner Penman?

No, I believe this is the last of

the questions,

thank you for all these workshops and the great snacks.

No? We haven't Oh, there's done more?

Darn it.

Thought we were off the hook.

Right.

No, just this Thank question. Okay. Yeah, I have nothing to add for question six. Thank you. Let's go on to water quality, please.

All right. So, last of 10 topics, we are on the last one now, Mr. Pendon, is water quality. And so there's a couple different coastal act provisions that we wanted to highlight as we start this conversation. The water quality topic is really driven by protection of marine resources in the coastal act.

So like the the part of chapter or article three, chapter article three that kind of includes this language is actually the marine resources area. So we kind of wanted to kind of frame it that way. And so the goal here at 03/02/1931 is to maintain optimum populations of marine organisms and restoring through, among other means, minimizing adverse effects of wastewater discharges entrapment and controlling runoff. So really that controlling runoff is really kind of some of the key language that we'll be talking about with some of these proposed policy changes that will be the emphasis of the conversation. And then there's also language and this is kind of this kind of competing policy, competing agencies thing that we'll want to talk a little bit about is that really the State Water Resources Control Board and of the regional entity overseeing water resources is really guiding water quality requirements locally.

So and we'll touch on that a little bit more, But there is, like, a a pretty established and detailed framework for managing, storm water, both during construction of new development and then also guiding the design of a project so that once it's built, it manages in large part storm water on-site. But that it's not you're not gonna get these huge flows off picking up pollutants going into waterways, right? So that's kind of very broad strokes some of the considerations kind of we're talking about here. This is probably some of this is at least as planning commissioners is pretty new to you. The the storm water water quality management provisions that the city applies are not found in title 17, are not found in the zoning ordinance.

Kind of the most direct reference is actually in section thirteen oh four one one five, and that reads that all new development and redevelopment projects must comply with the post construction stormwater management requirements contained in the stormwater technical guide compliance with storm water post construction requirements in Santa Barbara County. So a real mouthful there, but it's basically referencing other this other program, basically saying you got to comply with this this kind of regional program, right? And that's kind of the end within our municipal code right now of the requirements. And those requirements are listed on the city website. Again, it's these regional standards that are touched upon in the staff report and under the post construction requirements or PCRs, there's four tiers and so you look at kind of it's primarily driven by newer, impervious surface levels in square footage and depending on how much of that impervious surface you have, there's different tiers of submittal requirements and requirements for the project itself.

And we're grateful that Public Works here because really Public Works oversees that. When a project is reviewed internally, development projects, they're really guided by planning staff but there are other agencies in parts of the city hall that are part of that project and the storm water management requirements are reviewed by public works as part of that internal review process. So while it's you may see conditions as part of like a development plan or a land use permit or something that deal with storm water, those are really gifted to us by public works staff. And there's also Coastal Commission guidance on these topics, so while there is this regional framework, Coastal Commission does provide suggested alternative other language, so this isn't we're not unique here that Coastal Commission staff is requesting additional requirements that are above and beyond or different than this more this regional framework. So wanna make that clear too that there there is this kind of additional involvement with Coastal Commission that is is pretty standard.

Although, like, the detail of their guidance versus what was requested in their edits do differ to some extent. So within these water quality tables, there's two things we wanted to highlight. The first is really separate than that regional stormwater management framework and that is limitation on construction activities. And the main topic here we're looking at is grading because that's when you start moving around the dirt on a site and you have rain, that's where you can get runoff, right? A big slug of runoff.

So currently, we have policy that you can do those types of activities during kind of the rainy season or the wetter season, the winter generally speaking, and early spring. And what's proposed, in the revisions is essentially a prohibition on new grading earthmoving or vegetation clearance for November through April. So that would be a pretty significant limitation that doesn't exist today. There are a few caveats, but they're very limited. So one of them would be in an emergency, the other would be a continuation of grading that began before November 1.

But that's very limited exceptions where there's more flexibility now as long as you have your best management practices in place and you're adhering to conditions to address potential runoff on the site. And so that's a, again, when we think of water quality and regulations, think of the construction phase and this is one that we're highlighting with the construction phase and then there's the post construction requirements that we'll touch on on the next slide. And so, the of the long term development framework is really guided by compliance with the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board requirements and that's those four tiers looking at the amount of generally speaking, the amount of impervious surface that is created or redeveloped as part of a project. What Coastal Commission staff proposes kind of these additional requirements for certain projects of water quality concern. And so, there's kind of two things in the staff report that we looked at with these proposed revisions.

One is these added requirements and they're pretty significant. So, they're somewhere around kind of your tier three, tier four area under our existing, framework, although it's not just apples to apples. Right? So there's some additional requirements. And then also, new categories for which these standards apply to.

Again, the existing framework is primarily driven by this different thresholds of impervious surface. What's proposed by coastal commission staff looks at impervious surface but also looks at things like just road projects in general, housing projects of five units or more, so it's kind of detached from the impervious surface metrics. And then kind of additional projects as determined by the city and that's kind that would we raised that one in the staff report because these these standards can really cause like redesign of projects if you if you trigger these added standards. So kind of having that uncertainty about which kind of projects will qualify, is significant because this really needs to get determined early in the process. And so, we'd have to figure out, like, how do we decide?

Do we explicitly create a list of those added projects? Is that decided early in the project process? And if so, by who? How does that work? This is a pretty big decision to to move these move a project into these added requirements.

So, again, we kind of flagged this because we have a framework in place that we apply to stormwater management, again, overseen by public works and this would create like kind of this dual system for certain projects in the coastal zone. And so there's certainly going to be a lot of work that public works will have to do to create the oversight and management of this kind of now layered approach. In some instances, the requirements will be much more onerous than what's currently required for a project because of this broadening of the projects that apply and potentially duplicative or overlapping. Maybe there will be some conflicts in there, kind of the double B and the details, but a lot more submittal requirements for certain projects. So there'll be extra work for applicants and then extra work for public works overseeing this multi tiered process.

So we wanted to flag this because we see this as a pretty significant thing. It's, again, not something that you know, we talk about with the general plan and zoning because it's really kind of this other framework. And so that's why we wanted to kind of flag the significance of this item as part of the proposed revisions. And certainly, if there's questions about the details, about the tiers, we may have to defer and ask our colleagues in public works for a little help because it's something that certainly advanced planning doesn't typically deal with in our zoning regulations and that type of thing. So, kind of the presentation on the water quality and we have those three questions for you.

Okay, do we have commissioner questions? Any questions?

Yeah, just a little bit about the expanded requirements on the water quality program that the coastal commission's proposing. How would that like, what kind of projects would be affected?

Commissioner Penman, thank you for the question. I'm going to sound the alarm on this, because this is a big deal for public works. If this is implemented, our paving program will die in the coastal zone. We just won't be able to make the requirements that the Coastal Commission is asking for. So typically, with paving projects, we're already dealing with impervious area.

And what the Coastal Commission is saying, that doesn't matter. If you're doing a 5,000 square foot patch, which is very easy to do with the conditions our roads are in. I'm sure you're aware that the city strives to get our PCI to 67. We do annual pavement projects to get up to that level. We still can't meet it, so our streets are in bad condition right now.

So any project at this time, typically, we need to do these asphalt dig outs, and we just place it back. So we're not adding capacity. We're not increasing the size of the road. It's just maintenance work. So if this goes into effect, we won't be able to do any of these projects, because by what they're requiring, we have to acquire more right of way. Then we would have to add all the low impact development conditions to these projects. So we just wouldn't financially be able to do this work, and we don't have the staffing to do it.

And I'll just add. So that's one of the big ones that jumps out is at the end of the table, it's these categories of developments of water quality concern that have these kind of heightened standards. So one of them is a parking lot, street, road, or highway facility that creates and or replaces. So it's like when you have these existing roads, it's like adding and including that replacement there. Some of the other ones we flagged, the residential projects are five units or more.

So, again, they might, under our existing framework, require kind of heightened requirements depending on the impervious surface. But this that, like, adding that kind of detaches it from the impervious surface requirement, so it's just five units or more. So, kind of thing is new and then even the square footage impervious surface threshold for these higher standards has dropped compared to our existing. So, it's hard to kind of quantify exactly the significance, but there's definitely projects that will have both projects and private projects that will have increased analysis and standards as compared to the existing framework the city operates under. Thank you.

I had some questions about some of the specific categories that they called out in the sort of one through nine additional project categories. For five, a vehicle serving service facility, including a retail gasoline outlet, commercial carwash or vehicle repair facility. Do we have any existing policy around that that would put them at a higher stormwater? And or do you have concerns about that being a particular threshold? Just for number five, not the rest of the list.

I can try to answer the second part about I mean, one of the things that we try to think about a little bit is if we're applying this in the coastal zone, where would we see a new vehicle service facility like a gas station? I'm not sure that we would. Currently in the coastal zone, we have two parcels two and a half parcels zoned commercial. That's it. The Bacara, Jiffy Lube.

We have a lot of Old Town Galleta, like the southern portion of Old Town Galleta, has a lot of auto shops and vehicle repair, some of the other ones that are in there.

Yeah, the vehicle repair may apply South Old Town. So some of this, we might see some of it. In terms of heightened standards now, I think I'm not sure if public works would be able to answer that on the fly.

Yeah, I don't have information on this specifically. And then I

just have a question with so with seven, any project developed on land where the soil has been contaminated by previous land use or where the contaminated soil has the potential to be eroded or to release the contaminants into runoff. So that's written relatively vaguely right now but we do have some system in place, correct me here, around some sites that we know have contaminated soil, brownfield sites or things like that. I don't know if brownfields correct for sites in Galita but in some of our environmental justice analysis that we did last year, are there known sites with soil contaminants, old gas stations or things like that that we would be concerned about here or would have any records of?

There might be and we just don't have all of that at our fingertips right now. I think our coastal hazard study identifies all of that in the coastal zone, and then some of the studies that we did for environmental justice, are also on our website. But we don't have access to it right now. But there may be.

Okay. That's helpful. I think everything else I have is going be verging onto a comment, so I'm going to save it until after public comment.

Do we have any public comment on this item?

Yes, I do have one speaker slip. Michael. Those of you in the Zoom button, please use the raised hand icon and I will call on you. All speakers will have three minutes.

Is this on? Perfect. Yes. I would have concern about no new grading. Only in general, I I I really approve of, like, hey.

You don't wanna do any disturbance during the rainy season. But as a general contractor, when you move 50 yards, which is not very much at all, that triggers a grading permit. And and just to not be able to do any small amount of work, not only affects public works, but just as in general, things that would be very safe that you can accomplish in a two, three days. You would be precluded to do it for what appears to be four or five months, six months. And it's little not having that leeway, it'd be nicer if it would say understir like like, if you gave yourself a little bit of latitude there, and not just just 500 yards might be a good cutoff.

I know the county does things like that for different land use permits. This would be that would be my input. Thanks. We

do have one online speaker, Jay Ryderback. Please unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes.

Thank you. Good evening, chair and commissioners. Thank you for this opportunity again to speak. Jay Ryderbeck, agent for Bell Canyon Recreation, the owners of the Elwood onshore facility. We've provided prior feedback on previous workshops, and we'll follow-up with a letter today on these topics as well.

Our key concern, obviously, is that these revisions to the general plan, coastal land use plan, just that they don't create unrealistic hurdles for the abandonment, decommissioning, and eventual redevelopment of the EOF site. On water quality specifically, the proposed six month rainy season ban on grading and earthmoving expands an already five month restriction that would severely limit decommissioning work. And really, efforts need year round flexibility. Combining that with existing policies that already propose wildlife timing restrictions, viable windows for some of that work just really shrink too much. Please align policy with regional and state water board rules and allow year round work with proper erosion controls and BMPs.

Also, the new stormwater tiers and categories overlap and exceed those regional water quality post construction requirements and MS4 standards. They don't give any justification why. Again, we just ask that we defer to regional waters authority, which is already cited within the relevant coastal act policy, and avoid unnecessary overlapping local mandates. Many of the proposed changes, although they're aimed at new development, really could inadvertently affect abandonment activities through overly broad language that complicates work at the site and hinders our redevelopment efforts that would actually benefit coastal access and resources. Please add flexibility and exemptions even for decommissioning and abandonment at the EOF.

Provide consistency with those regional and state water boards and require impact analyses across all policy changes to avoid unexpected impacts or creating new unintended barriers to citywide reinvestment. Lastly, there are significant changes in six of the eight elements of our general plan. I think they only excluded noise and housing. As we near our twenty five year cityhood milestone, hope ruin we do our silver jubilee by adopting overly prescriptive policy language that would so dramatically change the essence of why we incorporated in the first place. Thank you for your time.

I have no more speakers, Chair. Thank you.

Any other questions from commissioners at this point? Okay, we'll go to the questions one by one again. Go ahead, Commissioner Maynard.

Can we pull the questions up? Thanks.

Question seven.

Yes, so I understand the motivation behind question seven, adding this rainy season prohibition. But when put into the context of our existing nesting and breeding season restrictions, it would only allow grading between September and December. And only having three months of grading in the entire year doesn't really seem reasonable. And so I do not support the addition of the rainy season ban. Also, I would note that the city has really strong stormwater best practices and guidelines that are already written into our laws that help to protect against stormwater runoff in a normal rain experience.

And so I also think it's unnecessary. So I would not support addition of the rainy season ban.

Yeah, I would echo what Commissioner Maynard said. I agree.

I am a hard no on question seven. Absolutely, you know, to delay any paving, any grading, any activities, we could have an uprising in the city of Goleta if you delay that paving that people are very anxious to get done. So that's a hard no.

I have a slightly more complicated answer for question eight. I think I'll point out some things that I like and then some places that I have concerns. So number one, basic paving and maintenance should be protected and shouldn't have to go through these additional layers of review. I fully agree and support staff on that. So for example, number three on the additional triggers really doesn't make sense to me.

I think we should be able to do basic maintenance without triggering things above the existing regional water quality guidelines that we have in place. I think number one in that policy around residential developments of five units or more is going to put us at odds with the HUD guidance and what we're trying to do with the housing element. So that doesn't seem to make sense for me and I think is going to give us issues when we come to the next housing element negotiation. This hillside development of just 15% of a grade seems like a pretty minor slope to trigger a whole new set of guidance, so that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Two things that do make a little bit more sense to me, I do think number five, the vehicle service facility, is one I could imagine doing a little bit of a higher stormwater assessment around.

So I have more of an openness to consider number five. I'd also have an openness to consider number seven, lands that we know have been contaminated. But I would want to have the city give us some guidance on some really clear objective language that could define what that means. So maybe in our environmental justice assessment we have identified some hazards that we could say if it was identified in this process then that could trigger it. But I wouldn't want it open ended where we'd have to do a new assessment of contaminated soil to see if it would trigger.

I think it would have to be something known and documented prior to them applying. So that would be how I'd think about number seven there. And then I guess in terms of some of the other guidelines the other thing I was struggling with and I don't have a clear enough answer on but I think there's there's places where as a city we decide to go above and beyond to do even better and be stored around the environment. And I think city of Galena since its founding has really done a beautiful job going above and beyond state requirements, going above and beyond the region to really be a leader in the environment. And I hope we keep that in some way.

And so I'm okay with us going above regional guidelines or above state guidelines in some ways. But I think what we should be trying to avoid is going perpendicular to guidelines. So if we have one set of guidelines that's so different from another set or can't be easily sort of stacked onto another set of guidelines to the point that you can't marry the two, I think that's where it becomes really problematic. So that's something I want us to keep an eye out for as we get in this. My leaning is to lean closer to the regional guidelines with potentially that exception of the five and seven that I highlighted.

But if we get pushback in negotiation with the Coastal Commission, my second approach would be to say, where does this stack nicely with what we have versus just become so different and such apples and oranges that we can't blend it with the regional guidelines that we're also trying to marry. So, are some of my thoughts on this one.

Yeah, I also think that of existing roads and road maintenance should be excluded from these new guidelines or any new guidelines to get those done and fixed. That said, I am a proponent of groundwater percolation and having impermeable surfaces and avoiding pollutants running straight into the ocean and so protecting that resource, but also helping restore our groundwater table. So, I would support any adjustments that improve what we have today for new construction and steer away from anywhere where it reduces protections or groundwater percolation. But yes, around new construction, think it makes sense.

Yes,

agree with what's already been stated. So, I think no need to repeat all of that. Thank you. We have question nine. Other This would be where Commissioner Peneman, you want to get ready for it, because this would be your last question.

I only have a very small comment for question nine, which is just that I think just really leaning into objective standards. I know that's something that we've been working towards over time is moving away from subjective to objective standards. And so I think across all the sections that we've talked about tonight, really making sure that we're leaning towards the objective and really that we have a way to implement what's being asked of us and what's being added. And that's just, I think, a more general comment across the board.

Now, I'd just like to thank you for giving us an opportunity to speak on all these topics. I appreciate all the work you've done.

I echo Commissioner Peterman. Thank you very much. Very, very informative.

All right. So that brings us to an additional feedback question that's just more open ended. If you have anything else to give us direction on to bring back to the Coastal Commission staff.

Commissioner Maynard.

I just have one small one that I should have mentioned when we were looking at the transportation element, but in my other comments I forgot to note it. Going back to TE15.X, not the planning one, logistics one, the second of those two. I didn't specifically mention but one of the things that they also recommended was for any transportation project that a full alternatives analysis would be pursued and that a full assessment of any types of impacts would be put in. And I think that's one where we don't have the process for that. You know, we don't have the assessment tool in place.

It's introducing alternatives analysis when there might not even be an EIR, so we wouldn't be doing alternatives analysis. So I think I'll just also note the onerousness of that, but also just not having the tools and resources to be able to do it would be another concern that I'd have with that particular one.

I would like to know if there is anyone from the public that would like to add anything additional with a question or comment after listening to all of this in these four workshops.

Yes, thank you chair. I have no speaker slips. Those of you on the zoom webinar, please use the raised hand icon and I will call on you. I'm seeing none, Chair. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Shall we go on to the next steps now? I believe that's next on the agenda.

Yep, you guys are in the routine now of the workshops. And you you expressed appreciation, and I'll I'll just put that back on you because you guys did the hard work, and this is a lot of material to cover. And you did it very well and really thoughtful of Galita's needs. And we'll package this up for the Coastal Commission, like we said, and discuss the input that we've received with them. And that will be the next step.

After that, we'll prepare a full public draft local coastal program that includes the regulations that accompany policy. And so, we'll take that back to you. And there'll be a public comment period, and then the planning commission can seek your recommendation, and then we'll take that to the city council for an adoption hearing. And then we go to the Coastal Commission for certification. So still a lot of work left to do, of course. But I think we really have this high level, meaningful input from the commission and from the public. We thank all of you for coming and attending these workshops. So that's it from staff, unless anyone else wants to add anything.

Thank you, everybody. Appreciate it. We now go to Planning Director's comments.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. I'd like to just begin by saying thank you again to all of you and to our excellent planning staff as well as public works staff for getting us through these four workshops. Obviously, a huge amount of work went into this and it is very significant and important work, very valuable feedback as we move forward through this planning process, which is a very significant one for the City. So, our next Planning Commission meeting is scheduled on the February 23. Since we have completed our work with the local coastal program workshop feedback, we will not need to hold a fifth workshop.

We have just one item scheduled, a small item for the twenty third. Then we do plan to hold a special Planning Commission meeting on March 2 in order to hear, allow the Planning Commission to hear the Shelby project, which is moving forward on a tight timeline. And in anticipation of that, we'd like to encourage you all to review the draft Environmental Impact Report for that project. That Environmental Impact Report was circulated for public review back in November. It is available on the Shelby project web page and we will be sending you a link or the EIR itself for your consideration, again, in advance of that March 2 hearing date.

One other upcoming event that I wish to alert you all to is there is a League of Cities Planning Commissioners Academy which is scheduled in March, March. It is scheduled to take place in Anaheim at the Sheraton Park Hotel. And if you are interested in participating and attending that Planning Commissioners Academy, we do have budget reserved to support Planning Commissioner attendance. However, we will need to make reservations, I believe, by the seventeenth, including hotel reservations by the February 17. So please let Kim Dominguez, our management assistant, know if you are interested in that.

And that is a something that's put on by the League of Cities with the express purpose of helping planning commissioners to understand the nature of their work and the technical planning issues that they face as planning commissioners. So, it's something that that I strongly recommend if you have not attended before or even if you have attended before that you consider attending again. I've attended them in the past myself and I think they're very valuable. And we're fortunate again to have budget to support your participation. So, with that, I will conclude my report and pass it back to you, Vice Chair.

Great. Any Planning Commissioner comment final Planning Commissioner comments?

I just want to say that I have attended the League of Cities Planning Commissioner Academy before and really found it incredibly valuable. They give lots of wonderful updates on current state laws and things that are changing. I especially recommend it for new planning commissioners or fairly young planning commissioners, as it really gives a wonderful background and training that it's to get locally. Plus, it's wonderful to talk with people from all sorts of cities all over California, hear what they're going through, what they're experiencing, what they're trying in their cities. So I found it to be a really valuable experience, and I would encourage my other commissioners to consider it.

With that, do we have a motion to adjourn?

I motion we adjourn.

Second. I second.

Okay, roll call vote please.

Commissioner Maynard.

Aye. Mr. Penningman.

Aye. Vice Chair Miller.

Aye.