Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I've wandered over. Thank you. Let's call this meeting to order of the city of Goleta Planning Commission, 10/27/2025. May we all stand for the pledge of allegiance? Okay, first up, we have public forum. It's a time where anyone can comment on things that are not on the agenda. Do we have anybody for public comment?

Pardon me, Madam Chair, can we go back and do roll call, please?

Oh, sorry. Roll call.

Thank you. Commissioner Maynard? Here. Commissioner Pendeman? Here. Commissioner Sirodkin? Absent. Vice Chair Miller is absent. And Chair Fullerton?

Here.

Thank you.

Okay. Sorry about that. Next, public forum. Do we have anyone for public forum?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I've not received any speaker slips. If any attendees on the Zoom webinar wish to speak to public forum, please use the raised hand feature and I will call upon you. And Madam Chair, we do have one attendee on the webinar wishing to speak. April Reed, if you could kindly remember to unmute yourself.

And, April, you should now be able to speak on public comment. Thank you. Hi, April. If you can hear me, please go ahead with public comment. You are unmuted.

Oh, we cannot hear.

Yeah. April, we cannot hear you and I'm not seeing any signal or input coming in from my side showing that you're speaking. So, if you want attempt to, you know, get your microphone turned back on.

Should we see if maybe she can reconnect?

Yeah, sure. April, if you can maybe try exiting the webinar and rejoining, maybe, Madam Chair, we can circle back to April.

Okay.

Okay.

Then, let's do we have any amendments or adjustments to the agenda?

Madam Chair, we do not.

Okay. So, first up, we have the administrative agenda. Can you please read the first item into the record?

Yes. Thank you. That is approval of the Planning Commission meeting minutes of 06/09/2025, and 08/25/2025.

Okay. Do we want to do them separately? Were you both present for both? Okay. I do have one note. The commissioner members on the first one for June 9 are not cracked, like on the header? Do we need to note that?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll note that for the record and make that correction.

Okay. Do we have any motion to approve the minutes?

Motion to approve.

Can I amend it to just include the comment that was just made about the members? Could you add that into your motion?

Yeah, motion to approve with the aforementioned amendment.

I second. Okay, can we get a roll call vote?

Thank you, Commissioners. Excuse me, Commissioner Maynard? Aye. Commissioner Peneman? Aye. And Chair Fullerton?

Aye. Okay, motion approved. Do we have the public forum speaker yet?

Yes, April Reed has rejoined. Let me see if I can put her back on the line. Okay. April, I've just, prompted you to unmute your microphone. You should be able to speak now.

Can you hear me?

Now we can. Yes.

Thank you.

Can. Alright. Thank you. Alright. So let me get my notes, and I will start. I apologize for any confusion. Alright. I was told years ago by the staff that the city council would not vote to build on Kenwood Village. As a result, I was deprived of the opportunity to comment on the first sequel report, which has many mistakes and exclusions. As a result, the city should require a second CEQA in general if the public was not given an opportunity to participate in the original CEQA.

Further, I was asked some questions about the notice sent regarding this meeting, but the people I sent the notice to at the planning commission refused to respond. So I was not able to properly respond, comment on the contents of this meeting. So I just want that for on the record. And regarding flooding in general, the government does not evaluate developed land for being in a flood zone. So if the developed property next door is in a flood zone, then the undeveloped land should be evaluated, before the developer can bill.

And for example, on Kenwood Village, I had, three days after a rainstorm, there was one to three feet of water all over the property. So that should be considered, for any development. Just because it's not considered to be in a flood zone because it's undeveloped doesn't mean it's not gonna be a problem. And that's all I have for general. Thank you. I do have, stuff for specific, but I'll save that for the specific comments.

Okay. Thank you. Next item is the b one. Can you read that into the record, please?

Yes. Thank you, madam chair. That is item b one consideration of title XVI subdivisions and Title XV zoning amendments to implement state planning law and provide various minor zoning changes and clarifications and determination that the amendments are exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act.

Okay. Do we have a staff report?

Yes. Chair Fullerton and Planning Commissioners. Andy Newkirk, Super Housing Planner in the Planning and Environmental Review Department. I'll be walking you through this item tonight. We also have Peter Amhoff, the Planning Director with us, who assisted with this packet and can answer questions as well. We'll get into the content here in a minute. Just wanted to give a picture of the packet for everyone's benefit. So we have the staff report, will provide provides quite a bit of detail on the amendments. We'll do a much higher level, overview during the presentation. What you're being asked to do tonight is recommend to counsel adoption of an ordinance that will amend title 16 and title 17 of the municipal code.

That ordinance is an attachment to the resolution. That's in a clean version, so you can't actually see in the ordinance what's changing. It's the final version. So, in Attachments two and three to the staff report, our underlying strike through of the various amendments proposed, so you can if it's easier to process that way, you can look at it that way. And then Attachment four is the CEQA exemption that we would file.

We did receive one public comment from April Reed that would have been provided to the commission and posted. We did respond to Ms. Reed on multiple occasions on those inquiries. So, with that, I'll just go over very briefly the hearing agenda. We'll do a staff presentation, take commission questions, open it up for public comment, and then go to deliberation and action on the recommendation.

So, some of you might be familiar with kind of what this type of packet is, but I know at least one of the commissioners this is new territory. We often refer to Title 17. That's the seventeenth title within the Guluda Municipal Code that regulates our zoning our land use. It's our land use regulation. It was adopted in March 2020.

Prior to that, we used the county's old zoning regulations for the first eighteen years of cityhood. And since then, we've done these occasional really maintenance updates kind of as we learn and utilize this new Title 17. We identify kind of ongoing, we keep track of potential edits that might benefit the users of the code, both staff and potential applicants, and then bring forward those amendments at these public hearings. Typically, the amendments fall into three categories. One is state law consistency.

We try to keep our code as best we can consistent with state law, though state law is always changing. What we call minor revisions, are substantive in nature but we think are kind of non controversial. They're really just kind of to help kind of make the title function better without really significantly changing the purpose or intent of the code. And then, really little cleanups might be typographical or clarifying the intent when the intent is clear but the language doesn't quite match. So, sometimes we refer to this packet as round six.

So, we think of these occasional round of updates. And so, we'll jump into kind of a brief overview of the changes that are proposed as part of this packet. The first has to do with state law consistency. As you're probably aware, the state law every legislative session is updating planning law, particularly with housing, but in other areas as well. So, first set of edits that we've had in the staff report are for what has historically been referred to as SB-nine projects.

And SB-nine was passed several years ago, which is meant to facilitate more housing in single family residential neighborhoods by allowing more subdivisions and multiple single family dwellings on individual lots. So, a few years ago, we implemented SB nine, both in Title 16, which you typically don't see before you, which is our subdivision title, and then also regulations in Title 17. So, that's why this packet references Title 16 as well because of these updates. SB four fifty was adopted more recently to take away some of the limited discretion that the local jurisdictions still had. I won't go through all of the changes.

There's quite a few. Kind of the biggest change is limiting cities to apply only objective standards that apply to the underlining zone. And so, two standards that we had in our SB nine regulations was a cap on the size of these residential units that were approved through this process to 800 square feet. We cannot apply that standard anymore. And we had height standards that were lower than the RS district, single family residential zone district.

The district standard is 25 feet, so we can apply a lower height standard. So, those are two of the biggest changes, but there are kind of several others in terms of processing and how we would process denials, etcetera. But the biggest change is that we can't apply any additional standards that we don't apply uniformly across the base zone district. The next item is community clinics providing reproductive health services. This is a pretty narrow use.

It's defined in state law and there's a bill that was passed that explicitly states where we have to allow these types of uses and also how we have to process the physical development associated with the use, which is a little bit unusual for some of these provisions, allowance of different types of uses. So, we prepared specific use standards for this use to line up with the state law. We also proposed some changes to our density bonus regulations. This actually wasn't prompted by a recent state law, but one thing our density bonus regulations are pretty short. We typically kind of defer to the standards in state law.

They change a lot. We try to keep our own regs pretty simple. But one thing we found is we wanted to add in some findings where we deny something like a concession or a waiver that an applicant is seeking under state density bonus law. State density bonus law requires us to make these findings, but they're not in our own code. So they're kind of like you kind of have to go to the law and kind of piece together what you have to what the showing in that finding has to be.

So we thought it would be better practice to actually put those in our code so it's really clear. We're able to reference our own finding that aligns with the state law. And then we also proposed a fourth finding where we approve a project utilizing state density bonus law just to document how they qualified and what they got based you know, what bonus they got under state density bonus law. So, just a good memorialization of that information so in the future when potentially there's like a change proposed on the site, we can look back and understand that history a little bit better than having to like dive into staff reports and kind of go beyond the entitlement document. Another thing that we proposed to add was a parking waiver.

And so this is under a state law that was passed a couple years ago where you can apply any parking standards within a half mile of major transit. So that's been on the books of the state and we've been obligated to apply it locally, but it hasn't come up much in the city. We have the train depot, but there's also certain bus stops may qualify and there weren't any in the city that qualified, but recent changes in the definition of those major transit stops, particularly for bus stops, may make depending on MTD schedules may make, this state waiver more applicable. So we wanted to at least just put in a reference to the state law just so we kind of had it so someone again, this is for, like, ease of use. We didn't try to spell it all out in Title 17, but we did want to have that reference available so people could immediately go to the code.

Even within our online code, you could click once we have a state law reference, that'll be like a link you can click to and get to the law a little easier. So, again, ease of use for both staff and the public. Another change that recently came into effect was noticing of changes to allowed uses. So, it's a bit of an odd case. Typically, we notice at least ten days prior to public hearings.

Typically, when you see us at these public hearings, we've noticed in the independent, at least ten days prior. Mailed out notice, at least ten days prior. In a narrow case for Planning Commission hearings to consider recommending changes to allowed uses on real property, that notice now has to be twenty days in advance. So, just based on our proposed change for community clinics, we had to notice this hearing twenty days prior rather than ten. So, it was in the independent actually twenty five days ago.

So, we wanted to put that in our code just so it doesn't get missed because it's a pretty obscure little piece of state law. And then also, there's a slight change to the definition of low barrier navigation centers in state law. This is a kind of a bridge housing between homelessness and permanent housing. It's really a clarifying revision to the definition, but we have that definition in our own code, so we don't want an inconsistency even though it's a very minor clarification in the use definition. So, then we have, a set of minor revisions.

One was just to consolidate two different automobile rental and leasing and sales uses that really had a lot of overlap in our code. So, sometimes, know, does it fall under this? Does it fall under this? And when we talk about it internally, it's like, well, there's no real reason to have these two different uses. Let's just consolidate them into one.

So, that's what we proposed. For fences and freestanding walls within the front and side setbacks, there's height limits and then there's an allowance to go higher than those height limits with a land use permit. But there's nothing like, there's no cap on how high those fences can go. With a land use permit, it's not really clear what grounds for denial there would be up to a 25 foot fence. In the county's old code, if you went above those height standards, need a conditional use permit, which provides a little more of a burden of showing compatibility, etcetera.

And so, we proposed bringing back that CUP so that there's a little more of like discretion involved when looking at these pretty large fences around properties. We also have specific standards for where trash enclosures can go on a site, like in the setbacks, locations, and size of trash enclosures. But a lot of trash enclosures also meet the definition of accessory structures, and there's regulations on locations and setbacks for accessory structures. So, we found that in some instances, we had two different sets of standards that we were asked to apply, And so, we clarified that where it's a trash enclosure, use the trash enclosure standard. Use the specific rather than the general.

We also proposed several changes to the inclusionary housing regulations. I won't go through all of these. Some of them are removal of some kind of operational standards for inclusionary housing. And that's because the city, couple of years ago, adopted affordable housing policies and procedures manual. This was adopted by council through resolution.

And that goes into a lot of detail about like the lottery process and who can be eligible for those housing units, which in a sense really isn't like pure land use regulation. It's really the operational mechanics of those below market rate units. And so, we think it makes more sense to keep it in the manual and remove those provisions from the zoning code as that's kind of a more comprehensive document that is adopted through resolution. So, it's not just like a staff level document. So, that's a better home for that information.

Another, item we flagged is, sometimes you have these big discretionary entitlements that are, approved by the county before incorporation and we put something in the zoning code where if you had a development plan that was approved before, know, those properly processed, approved prior to city incorporation or prior to Title 17, that wasn't considered non conforming because we knew with Title 17 we were kind of adding a lot of stuff, a lot of new requirements, new procedures, etcetera, and we didn't want to kind of create just non conforming properties all over the city. We found that in a rare occasion, previous development was actually approved through a conditional use permit, not through a development plan. So, we proposed adding the conditional use permit that approved physical development into that kind of exception from non conformity. So, again, a nod to these projects that were approved and did everything right and we didn't want to, you know, as a policy matter, didn't want to limit, you know, kind of put them in that non conforming state with Title 17. A couple more.

We proposed a consolidate expiration date. Some of our approvals have different timeframes for how long they're valid for like design review approval versus development plan. Often, it'll be Planning Commission that approves both of these and there was an incident recently where a project had to come back to extend their design review approval even though their development plan was still valid, and so we proposed to line those up with the kind of the latest date of your approval so that you don't have to go through that process. We also have some particularly old projects, entitlements from the county, and when you want to do a small change to one of those projects, you often need kind of a minor change, a substantial conformity determination or amendment to the development plan, and one of the findings is the original findings can still be made. In some instances, we don't have those original findings anymore.

We never got them. So, it makes making the new finding kind of difficult because we don't know what the original findings were. And so, we proposed an exception to that requirement in those instances. Another kind of nuanced procedural issue is, we have a provision that says Design Review Board appeals are stayed until all other permits are issued and one of those other permits would be a zoning clearance. But the zoning clearance can't be issued until all other entitlements have been granted.

So, you have this process where the appeal gets stayed until this permit gets issued, but the permit can't be issued. So, we clarified that an exception at that zoning clearance permit does not need to be issued to process the design review appeal. We also proposed to extend out the design review approvals a little further, adding a year to the different levels, just to reflect the reality that sometimes projects take a little while to get through the process and we didn't feel like an extra year would be that not too much is going to change within that timeframe that we're going to be worried about having these approvals where we've updated a lot of things in our code. So, we think a little more flexibility with those timelines has some value. And then the final minor revision is for height modifications.

Under the code, height modifications are capped. There's only so much extra height you can get with a modification and it's actually larger in the coastal zone than in the inland zone and that was a relic of when our residential our housing zones in the coastal zone had lower height standards. So we wanted so we originally gave more flexibility for height modifications in the coastal zone because they started out with a lower maximum, but after that, with housing element implementation, we aligned those heights, both inland and coastal, and so we wanted to align the flexibility for modifications to be the same across the city. So, finally, there's several just kind of clarifications and cleanups. We're not going to go over those as part of the presentation.

They're in bullet form in the staff report. Again, we're happy to go through back with any questions you might have on any of those, but we really feel these are kind of non substantive in nature. Finally, there's, several reasons why, we've identified these amendments are exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act. They're pretty standard for a lot of these kind of minor amendments, including like, doesn't qualify as a project and no possibility of causing a significant effect on the environment. For the SB four fifty amendments in particular, those are exempt from SEQ under state law.

So, we added that as a special rule for those SB four fifty edits. So, that concludes the staff's presentation. We'll answer any questions you may have and then open up public comment. And as a reminder, again, we'll go back to the slide at the end. But what we're asking of the Planning Commission is to recommend the ordinance for adoption by city council.

Okay. Thank you very much. Do we have any commissioner questions? Commissioner Peniman?

Yeah, could you just explain a little bit about the height limit change? Like, what was exactly was that change? On-site limits or

So, Commissioner Petteman, fairly recently, even our moderate and high density housing in the coastal zone, the max height was 25 feet. And as part of the housing element, but in the inland area, it was 35 feet. And so we allowed for greater modifications, which is a discretionary approval, to allow more height, extra height in the coastal zone because the maximum height was lower. As part of housing element implementation, we aligned those height standards in the inland and coastal from moderate and high density housing to 35 feet. So what we're proposing is actually to reduce the modification potential in the coastal zone because that was really a relic of when the standards were different in Linden Coastal.

And is there, like, a percentage on the modification that's allowable or what is the allowable modification if the limit's 35?

Just give me if you give me one second to look it up. I wanna I have a number in mind, but I wanna double check it. I'll I'll I'll respond. I'll get back to that. That's okay. Yeah.

I I

think it's on page eight. Currently, provision allows for maximum modification of 30% of the base height maximum in the coastal zone and 20% base district height maximum in the inland for the planned residential medium density and high density zone districts.

Yeah. And so, we're proposing to make it 20 across the board, inland and coastal. So, it's a reduction from 30% possible increase in the coastal to 20%. Gotcha. Thank you.

I think that was it.

Commissioner Maynard? You covered this in

a way in your presentation, but if you could just elaborate a little bit more. I was reading the staff report on SB four fifty, and there's, like, your second bullet point on there says, may only impose standards on urban lot splits that are related to the design or the improvements of a parcel, lot size access and grading. I know we worked really hard to make our design standards very non subjective and very easily quantifiable design standards. But it seems like we've needed to remove the design standards in this. Can you tell me a little bit more about what types of design standards could we impose based on the second bullet point?

This is page two of your staff report. Second bullet point.

Yeah, Commissioner Maynard, I think that's a challenge with some of the state law that gets passed is trying to parse out, what that means. And so, you know, we removed I don't have a great answer for that because, you know, when removing those design standards, we, you know, we remove those because those are like the, you know, the of the facade type standards and those were seen as objective standards not applied universally across the base zone district. So, that's where a lot of the removal comes from is we think that provision of the state law is pretty clear. And so, you know, that's the best I think I can answer, trying to tease out that language, but it's, you know, it's really that first bullet ended up kind of dominating a lot of the revisions we proposed.

That makes sense. And then another clarification, the last bullet in that same list, may no longer deny an application for an urban lot split or secondary primary dwelling due to specific adverse impacts to the physical environment. So that means any type of, like, environmental impacts, traffic, climate, TDM. Are those the types of things we are removing with the physical environment?

Yeah, Commissioner Maynard so we've never applied these standards. We actually have never had an SB nine project. But yeah, like looking at kind of your classic, like thinking about ESHA and those types of things. So now we're just looking at strictly public health and safety as a grounds for denial. So, yeah, the state's clearly clawing back that flexibility we may have, to interpret that. But I think looking at your classic kind of like CEQA think about CEQA. It's a ministerial, so there's no CEQA, but thinking about kind of those classic environmental, air quality, biological resources, those types of things are not grounds for denial.

Does that prohibit us from like we have such strong guidelines around streamline protection areas so you can't build too close to streamline protection area would this mean somebody could build and to do a lot split and build next to a streamlined protection area?

I think we'd have to look at it on a case specific. We are allowed to apply standards that apply in the base district. Okay. So, we'd have to look at that. But we'd you know, the short answer is we'd be limited to what the state law says. But I think we'd have to look at that in the individual case and make a determination.

Thank you. And then I'm just I guess to get a better sense of context, you talked a bit about the change in definition of what a major transit stop is. And the big change there is that change from minimum fifteen minute interval to a minimum twenty minute interval. What types of corridors is that open for us currently? I mean, I know MTD schedule can change. But as of today, do you have a sense of what that opens up?

Yeah, Commissioner Mayer, we haven't made a definitive determination on any one site we'd want to look at at the time of the project. We don't have a map right now. But we're looking at the Hollister Corridor certainly as a place that you know, may qualify depending on, you know, the specific schedules and a project moves forward. But like through Old Town up to like Stork and Hollister area, there are several bus lines, yeah.

Thank you. Appreciate that.

Do we have any other questions? Okay, then can we go to public comment?

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I have currently received two requests to speak. Speaking first, I have Doctor. Ingborg Cox, followed by April Reed. And as a reminder, to any other attendees on the Zoom webinar wishing to speak, please use the raise hand feature, I will call upon you.

Madam chair, Commissioners, my name is Doctor. Ingeborg Cox. I have training in emergency medicine, family practice, and occupational and environmental medicine. I'm just going to say a few words. New development should always follow the steps that have been taken since the creation of the city of Goleta.

Any new development that affects the average daily trips and traffic flow of major streets or will impact existing residential cul de sacs should not be processed ministerially. One person's opinion is not sufficient even if the person is the Director of Planning and Environmental Review. The city of Goleta is changing, but it appears that the health and safety of the residents are not being placed as they should, a top priority. The proposed units can be placed anywhere in the city could also have the same effect for the residents. It is known that living very close to the freeway and train tracks exposes the residents to pollutants like ultrafine particles, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, black carbon, nickel, cadmium, lead that also can contribute to adverse health effects.

California officials recommend a minimum of 500 feet from the freeways, but environmental experts note that pollution can travel much farther, sometimes up to 1.5 kilometers or more. Consequently, units cannot be anywhere in the city if we care about the residents' health. Approvals of trade offs to meet the city's inclusionary housing requirements should not be made by only one person. The projects should be authority. As it is mentioned in page six, it is imperative that only the city council be the final decision maker that, in my opinion, is consistent with good planning practices.

It also states on page 10 that the amendments are not subject to the California CEQA because activity is not a project that will not result in direct or indirect physical changes on the environment. And it continues that The amendments are exempt from CEQA because the activity is covered by the general rule that can be seen with certainty to have no possibility for causing a significant effect on the environment. The clue word is significant. What happens if the activity just causes an effect to the environment? Shouldn't that be addressed?

And also, respect the privacy of the residences that have been in Bolita prior to the creation of the city, specifically when the buildings are going to be higher up. Thank you.

Thank you. No, thank you.

Thank you. Speaking next, have April Reed. And once again, April, please kindly remember to unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes.

Okay. Can you hear me?

Yes. Thank you.

Okay. Just wanna respond to a previous lie that was told about me. Mr. Newkirk wrote one response, but it was not really a response to my questions. So I would appreciate if you guys could read my comments and his lack of responses yourselves rather than taking his lack of word for it. I won't go on further. I've been lied to so many times by you guys. I'm sick of it already. So number one, there should be no parking waivers. I live on a private street.

The city and the developers should be responsible for providing sufficient parking for a project. I'm not gonna spend my life fighting with tenants not to park on the private street I live on. Two, there should not be bonus density, especially in suburban areas. Three, any height should not be increased. Instead, it should be decreased.

Three stories is too big for a suburban neighborhood with mostly one story housing with a few two story houses sprinkled in. Four, and this part last statements I'm making are kind of confusing to me, which is why I wanted a response, but I didn't really get one. So I'm just gonna do my best. Probably isn't gonna be responsive to what is written in your report because I didn't understand it, which is why I wrote it in the first place. To my understanding that the staff and the design review board make all of the decisions, I asked what process there was to have the city council rule on projects since they are elected officials, but no one responded.

Also, I'm not clear about the effects of the stay of the design review board appeals. If they make if the design review board makes all the decisions, then who's supposed to hear the appeals? I'm just a a regular person. I'm not an expert in all of this, which is why I'm trying to ask questions, and, I would appreciate responses. I don't ask that many questions, but, at least a response would be good, and I don't appreciate all of the lies. Thank you. That's all I have. Okay.

Thank you. Do we have any other public comment?

Thank you, madam chair. I don't have any other, public comment at this time.

Okay. Then let's go ahead and close public comment for deliberations. Do we have any comments? Commissioner Maynard? I

have a clarifying question before deliberation. There was another question that that I had around the map. So there was the shift to allowing affordable housing or inclusionary housing to be relocated in any part in the city if it is allowed to be, if it's approved to be off-site. And the map that was chosen to consider this was the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee opportunity map. But I know we also recently did the white paper for the city of Galita on environmental justice and incorporated some of that into our general plan.

And then that I know Old Town Galita has significantly more environmental issues and impacts in other areas of Galita. Can you talk about why the tax credit opportunity map was used rather than something like the Cal EPA map that informed our environmental justice research and work?

Yeah, Commissioner Maynard, we looked at that. That was a data set that we relied on quite a bit in our housing element analysis in the technical appendix. And so we thought in terms of some flexibility but also trying to give clarity to applicants, that was a logical data set to use because that's kind of when we looked at our AFF8, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Analysis in our housing element, that's information that we looked at quite a bit. So we thought that was like an appropriate kind of place to start with, kind of looking at should we limit those other those locations within the city And we felt like that because of that, we thought the rationale for allowing it with throughout the city made sense.

Do you have any other questions? Okay, Commissioner Penrune?

Yeah, thank you, staff, for presenting the changes with the red lines through it. It was a lot easier to see what was actually changing in the city code with this ordinance. And there's nothing really ground, you know, earth shattering. It all made sense, the changes that are proposed. Of course, is the state law consistency that, Doctor. Engelberg Cox and Ms. Reed mentioned about the ministerial approvals. And, of course, I don't like that, but my understanding, that is state law. That is not something under our control and that we are mandated to put into our government code. Is that correct?

Commissioner Pendment, I don't I wouldn't go so far as to say we're mandated to put it in our code, but we're mandated to follow the state law where they say ministerial, we have to do it.

Alright. Thank you. So, that is coming down from the state and not something that this planning department has brought up at all or is proposing on our own fruition. So, given that and the changes all kind of made sense and made things more consistent, I did have a concern about the heights, so thank you for kind of explaining that. We're actually lowering the possibility for heights in the coastal zone, it sounds like. All right. That's it for me.

Commissioner Maynard?

Moving on to more deliberative comments. I agree with Commissioner Peneman. In the changes that we're making tonight, we're actually decreasing heights, not increasing them because we're moving from the 30% to the 20% allowance to change in that coastal zone. No other heights are being changed or increased in tonight's meeting. It saddens me that the count that the state doesn't see the value of the local voice in as much of these projects.

It is moving so strongly towards the ministerial, but as you said, that is required. Bonus density is also something that we're we're not going above and beyond the state. We're only doing what the state is allowing. I I heard some public comment about concerns with bonus density, but we're just doing what we gotta do here. I think the staff has done a really amazing job really thinking through some of the complexities of the zoning ordinance, looking for those inconsistencies, looking for those pinch points that just make life a little bit harder, and you've cleaned up those in a way that still I think respects where our residents want to see our work going within the constraints of what we can do with the state.

So I think the smaller cleanups, while they may be minor in some cases, I think are going to make a real difference for applicants at the planning desk and for folks working on projects. Appreciate all the work you've done thinking through that. This seems like a real sensible set of recommendations. And the ones I've got concerns with are the ones that the state's requiring us to do. So I think we can't go further with that.

I hope we still continue to track some of the environmental concerns in Old Town Gallita. That makes me a little bit concerned with the map choice here, but I think you had a really good answer for that, Mr. Newkirk, and that helped me understand why that the map was chosen that it was there. But hope we keep that tracked moving forward. I would be inclined to support this as recommended by staff.

Also I agree with really all of your of the sentiments of my the other planning commissioners. I want to say I do I listen to your comments. And think we can I don't want to speak for anyone else, but agree with a lot of your comments? And as Commissioner Maynard mentioned and staff, we just do not have any local control over a lot of these things anymore. It's the state, and I encourage everyone who does not agree to reach out to the state.

I know that all staff does everything they possibly can do to mitigate these changes and to keep as much local control as possible. I do think that everyone has the best intentions and we cannot go against what the state wants at this point. There's just too much at risk. So I support all these changes. And yeah, again, I want to make sure everyone knows that we don't make these decisions lightly.

And we don't love it, but we're stuck. So I know I personally have reached out to the state, and I think if everybody's everybody needs to make their voice heard. So, those are my comments. Wait. Do we have a motion?

Sure. You're gonna have to help me with this a little bit, but I I motion that we, and I read the whole thing. Is that right? Okay. Yeah. I adopt the, Planning Commission Resolution number 25 dash entitled a resolution of the Planning Commission of the City of Galita, California recommending that the city council adopt amendments to title 16 subdivisions and title 17 zoning of the Galita Municipal Code to implement state planning law and provide various minor zoning changes and clarifications and to determine the amendments to be exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, case number 20 ORD.

I would like to second.

Can we get a roll call vote?

Yes, thank you. Beginning with Commissioner Maynard.

Aye.

Commissioner Peneman. Aye. Commissioner Sarakin is absent. Vice Chair Miller is absent. And Chair Fullerton?

Aye. Thank you. Motion approved. Okay. Next is item c, Planning Director's Comments.

Good evening, Chair and Commissioners. I don't have much by way of comments or report tonight. I just wish to note and inform the commission and the public that we would normally meet again in two weeks on November 10. However, because we have no items for that night and because November 11 is Veterans Day and a holiday, we're going to be cancelling the November 10 meeting. Our next scheduled meeting is going to be a special workshop on November 13, Thursday at 6PM, the first of two planned local coastal program workshops.

We will then we're planning to meet the following week on Wednesday the nineteenth at six p. M. For a second planned local coastal program workshop. So that's the plan at this point. Should there be any changes, we will inform the Commission and the public.

Okay, thank you. Next is Planning Commission comments. Do we have any Planning Commission comments? No? And, can we have a motion to adjourn? I make a motion to adjourn.

I second.

Roll call and vote.

Commissioner Pettiman? Aye. Commissioner Maynard?

Excuse me. Aye.

And Chair Fullerton?

Aye. Meeting adjourned.