Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Welcome to the meeting of the City of Goleta Planning Commission for 12/08/2025. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The

United States Of America

and to the republic Okay. Could we have a roll call vote of the Planning Commission members, please?

Commissioner Maynard?

Here.

Commissioner Peneman? Here. Commissioner Sirodkin?

Here.

Vice Chair Miller?

Here.

And Chair Fullerton is absent.

It is time now 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. Reasonable time limits are imposed on each topic and each speaker. And in accordance with provisions of the Ralph M. Brown Act, no action or discussion may take place by the Commission on any item not posted on the agenda. The Commission may respond to statements made or questions asked and may direct staff to report back on the topic at a future meeting. Do we have any speakers for the public forum?

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Have not received any speaker slips for public forum. 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 Vice Chair, I am seeing one hand raised from April Reed. April, you will have three minutes and please remember to unmute yourself.

Can you hear me?

Yes, thank you.

Alright. Great. First of all, I just wanna make clear a statement that, was made to me by council member Kiryako maybe a year or so ago. I asked him how to not build on Kenwood Village, and he said, that that would be possible if, there was building on Shelby. Now it looks like there will be building on Shelby.

Also, I read in The Independent that you guys have enough buildings or residences to comply with the state. So I just wanna make sure I don't know if you guys are involved with this or not, but I just wanna make sure that the trade for the housing on Kenwood to Shelby is done properly. And, so there's no mistakes, and that it is done pursuant to council member Kiryako. I don't know if you need to speak to him about this, but this is what he told me. I and I wanna make sure that since this is supposed to be a slow development community and it's a smaller community, it's not like LA, that, we don't build more than what we're required to.

So if you guys could follow-up on that, I would appreciate it. And along those lines, I know a couple weeks ago, guys talked about, staying any appeals from the design board. I don't know what that means. I've been trying to find out if that means that, the planning commission and or the city council does or does not have any income or or I'm sorry. Say in the process.

I'm also gonna discuss this with the design board last night tomorrow night meeting. But like I said, I don't know what the process is anymore. Nobody will explain to me after repeated requests for, an explanation. And lastly, on CEQUA, I think I've mentioned before that I was not given the opportunity to comment on the First Kennewood Village CEQUA because I was told expressly by a staff member that, the city council would not build on Kennewood, which turned out not to be true. There are multiple, discrepancies and problems with the first CEQA.

So there should be a second CEQA in order to allow for the public to have an honest debate. I did send in statements with, discrepancies already, but I would like the opportunity to, make statements. Thank you very much.

And Madam Vice Chair, have no further public speakers at this time.

Okay, thank you. Director Imhoff, are there any amendments or adjustments to the agenda?

Yes, Madam Vice Chair, we do have one requested amendment. With your permission, we'd like to take item C1 ahead of item B1. Item C1 on tonight's agenda is the shorter item and we'd like to take that first.

Very well. Clerk Norman, would you please read in item C1 from the agenda, please?

Yes, that is item C1, consideration of an ordinance amending section 17.41.030 of the municipal code regarding accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units to comply with recent changes in state law and finding the action to be statutorily exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act under section two one zero eight zero point one seven of the Public Resources Code.

Madam Vice Chair, I do want to note that we do have an administrative agenda under item a one, which we will still need to take.

Okay. Yes. Madam Chair, that is item A1, approval of the Planning Commission meeting minutes of 10/27/2025.

Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any discussion about the meeting minutes for 10/27/2025? Okay. Seeing no discussion, do we have a motion to approve the minutes?

I motion to approve the minutes.

Do we have a second?

I'll second.

Okay. Very could we have a roll call vote, please?

Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Beginning with Commissioner Maynard.

Aye.

Thank you. Commissioner Pendeman? Aye. Commissioner Sorokin? Aye. And Madam Vice Chair Miller?

Aye. Thank you.

And now that takes us to item C1, consideration of an ordinance amending section seventeen point four one point zero three zero of the Municipal Code regarding accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units to comply with recent changes in state law and finding the action to be statutorily exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act under Section two hundred ten eight hundred seventeen of the Public Resources Code.

Alright.

Could we have the staff presentation, please?

Of course. Hello, and welcome to this public hearing for the Title 17 amendments that address state law requirements relating to accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units. We'll call them ADUs and maybe even JADUs. We'll try to watch the acronyms as much as we can, but they're kind of a mouthful. I'm Ann Wells, your advanced planning manager, and I am accompanied by Andy Newkirk and Cam O'Draa over there.

And they're both in advanced planning. I think you know them. And they're going to give the lion's share of this presentation. I also wanted to flag that Brian Stager from the city attorney's office is online. And he is, for us and our amendments, an expert on the topic and help guide us to make sure that we're consistent with state law.

Because you'll learn tonight that there's consequences if we're not consistent. So I just wanted to flag your your hearing packet. It's gonna typical of ordinance of of title 17 zoning amendments. We have an attachment one, and that is your resolution to the city council. And then in exhibit and then in attachment two to the staff report, you'll see a tracked changed version of the amendments.

And that's kind of handy so you can see the net difference that we'll be talking about tonight. If we get up the next slide, I'll jump right into the public hearing agenda. And if it's Okay with the vice chair, we'll follow the typical format, which is staff presentation. We'll just proceed. And then we'll take your questions and then public input.

And then we will go to commission deliberation and then an action on the recommendation. Okay, great. Okay, just a little bit on the background. I'm sure you've heard by now that the state seeks to address the housing needs in California. And one of the ways to generate new units is through accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units.

And so every year, it seems that there's new legislation that's adopted by the state that trigger a requirement for us to update our regulations. And in summary, those changes that are happening in the state limit local jurisdiction and authority over ADUs and JADUs. So you can see on the slide that there's been a number of changes from the state and assembly bills, and more recently, the assembly bills and senate bills that are listed up on the screen. And what we did was, working with Ryan Stager and his team, was to make sure that we do just strictly make the changes that are required and going no further than that. And so I will turn the presentation over to Andy and Cam, and they can succinctly walk you through each change as it's laid out in the staff report.

Thanks, Anne. For these slides, we'll just kind of go over these quickly and say kind of what's current in our regulations and what's being proposed to just explain the difference. And I'll flag only one instance in which there's really any flexibility on the language. So really, this is informing you of just what we have to do to comply with these four new, pieces of legislation. So the first is, kind of a clarifying edit.

We have size limits under certain portions of our ADU regulations, based on square footage. And what's being proposed for update to comply with the new laws is to clarify that these measurements are based on interior livable space. And livable space is already defined in the regulations. So probably some jurisdictions are looking at footprint external, and this is to clarify that it's that interior living space. That's how you measure whether something qualifies under different provisions.

The next item, this might be a little bit confusing, but there's kind of four categories of ADUs where you don't need a zoning permit. You just go straight to the building counter. And we check that you comply with the regulations, but you don't need that separate zoning permit before a building permit. And these four categories are listed on the screen. There's some ambiguity as to whether if you're on a single family lot, could do both one and two and whether it was cumulative or mutually exclusive, one or the other.

And a recent change in what we're implementing is to make clear that it is cumulative. You can if you're on a single family lot, you can do one and two. If you're on a multi family, you can do three and four. So kind of it's again being beneficial to those seeking to develop those ADUs. The next item is the permitting process.

So, in existing law, we must process the ADU application within sixty days. So there's been several changes in state law to tease out a little more about the various steps and the timelines for the different stages of review because we do a completeness. It's you have sixty days after completeness of application to either issue or deny, And so this gives some timelines before that completeness determination, so what happens, how quickly do we have to review to determine completeness before that sixty day clock begins. And so there's some clarification about those timelines and then also how we interact with that applicant if we deem the application incomplete, kind of how we have to notify that applicant and provide clarity to them. There's also a new provision about giving the applicant authority to appeal our completeness determination.

This is the one area where we have some decision making here. We can either make that appeal body be Planning Commission or City Council. We drafted it as Planning Commission. The idea is unburden City Council as much as possible when it comes to planning items, so that's what's proposed. That's one piece of flexibility that we have, very limited. So that's when you look at the track changes kind of the biggest bulk of new language is these procedural changes. There's some new language about processing in the coastal zone, somewhat relevant to tonight's. The next item is it varies whether you have a certified LCP or not. Don't worry about the acronym quite yet. We'll get to that in the next item.

But what we have to do as a non certified jurisdiction is we have to notify Coastal Commission when we get an application. That's very clear in the law. And we kind of have this funky procedural process because we're not certified and so we also are proposing to clean up the process a little bit and actually require an ADU permit in the coastal zone, so this would be something we would issue. It's not a CDP. Again, don't worry about the acronym yet.

We'll get to that later tonight. But it would where it would basically align our process inland and coastal when it comes to ADUs as to what we would review. So, you're building permit only inland or coastal, you wouldn't need a zoning permit. If you are non exempt as we call it, so you need a zoning permit, inland and coastal would be the same process. And for all ADUs you need documentation from Coastal Commission that they're either giving you a waiver and you don't need a coastal development permit or you've gotten your coastal development permit already.

So we would deny a project if they don't have that. That'd be a denial and then they could come back and get that CDP and get their local permits. So, we think these are some good improvements, some standardization and meeting the state law. One other small change, we currently require sprinklers in ADUs if the primary residence requires ADUs. There was an amendment was also to require the same for JADUs.

So, if primary residence needs sprinklers, the JADU needs sprinklers as well. Very minor at it. Next item is JDU owner occupancy. So, currently, the property owner must reside either in the JDU or the remaining portion of the single family dwelling. So, in one of those units, owner must reside there.

What changes is that only applies if the ADU shares sanitation facilities with the main dwelling. So, again, limiting that owner occupancy requirement, that's been a trend in other updates to the ADU laws kind of moving away from owner occupancy requirements. So that's just furthering that trend we're seeing. The next item, Breezes. It's long on the screen but nothing changes now, but there's new provisions for disaster affected areas.

This is really a reaction to the fires South of us and kind of the rebuilding efforts and getting residences of any kind approved and built. So, it provides that you could have a essentially get the certificate of occupancy for an ADU prior to your primary residence under certain conditions that nothing changes here currently, but if there was a disaster declared in Santa Barbara County in the future, this provision might allow some flexibility on how quickly some ADUs can get approved and built. And for the last few items, I'll pass

it off to Cam O'Draw. Thanks, Andy. Next up is impact fees. And currently in the municipal code, ADUs that are seven fifty square feet or smaller are exempt from development impact fees. However, right now, j ADUs aren't currently specifically addressed.

And under the state proposed changes, j ADUs that are 500 square feet or less would be exempt from development impact fees. And since JADUs are typically 500 feet or smaller, this basically exempts all JADUs. Additionally, any ADU or JADU under 500 square feet would be exempt from school impact fees. Next slide. Next, I'll touch on state law updates that don't require amendments to Title 17.

First off is the new state law change prohibiting JADUs as short term rentals. So the city already prohibits both ADUs and JADUs from being used as short term rentals. So we're already consistent with state law, and no Title 17 changes are needed. And the second, HCD submittal requirements. State law requires cities to submit any adopted ADU ordinance to within sixty days.

A new requirement is that we need to respond to any HCD findings within thirty days. And if we don't meet those deadlines, then an additional new provision from the state makes the ordinance null and void. And so to address this, the proposed ordinance, specifically section five, formally direct staff to submit the ordinance to HCD within the required timelines. And up here on the slide are a few additional cleanup changes included in the ordinance. First, deed restrictions are not required for ADUs.

They only apply to JADUs consistent to state law. Second, we've updated and added cross reference citations throughout the chapter just to make it easier to navigate and to ensure internal consistency. And finally, we made several clarifying edits, including updated clause language and clearer subsection titles to improve readability interpretation. So last, a note on CEQA. So under state law, the California Environmental Quality Act does not apply to a city's adoption of an ordinance that implements state ADU law.

So this ordinance would be exempt, and no additional environmental review would be required. And with that, I'll go ahead and pass it to Anne.

That concludes staff's presentation. I hope you got the, like, clarity on what was required to be changed and how we're proposing to change it. And the recommendation is on the slide, and it's the same one that was in the staff report.

Thank you for the report. Do we have any Commissioner questions? Commissioner Sirodkin.

This is more I guess a point of clarification. I thought when I read through the material that it said an ADU can be more than 800 square feet. And now and then but the other is a minimum of 500 for a J ADU. That that it didn't seem to make sense from. So if you could clarify that. Am I reading it wrong about the ADU and the 800?

So Commissioner Sarotkin, the 500 refers to the max size of a JADU, which is kind of a subset of ADUs. The 800 square feet, it impacts the permit path. So theoretically, could go larger. But we also can't where we apply additional standards to the nonexempt ADUs, we can't apply standards such that an 800 square foot ADU could not be built. So we'd have to yield on, like, our setback standards to allow an 800 square foot ADU. If they meet all the other standards theoretically, they could go larger. But so there's kind of the 800 is used in several places. The 500 is also used in a few places. So I hope that clarifies it.

Commissioner Maynard.

Thank you for the presentation. This is very straightforward, and I know we don't have a lot of wiggle room in here to change much. So I'll limit my question to actually sort of a clarification, and this might I'm just kind of curious for your thoughts on it. It was interesting to me to see that they prohibited short term rentals, but also require us to allow owners not to live on-site. And I know we put in the owner occupancy guideline as a way to try to restrict short term rentals. Can you give us any insights or thoughts on, like, how those two changes are coming together in the state's thoughts.

Yeah. Mr. Steger might have more to add. I mean, short term, you know, we're looking you know, part of the benefit we see for ADUs is adding additional permanent housing stock. So, that's we've always had this probation on short term rentals. Certainly, enforcement of that is always going to be a challenge. In waiving that owner occupancy requirement, there is kind of the idea would be the middle ground that both the ADU and the primary residence would still be for a long term tenant. Know, just because the owner occupants the owner doesn't live on-site doesn't mean it's inherently going to be a short term rental. So, the idea is more flexibility for a property owner, but we still have that backstop that we do have that prohibition on the short term rentals.

And Commissioner Maynard, I don't know if is everyone able to hear me okay? Yeah. I was just gonna say I agree. I agree with Andy. I I don't have any additional insight to add. State law has been a bit of a a pinball, if you will, on some of those those topics. And and, yeah, currently, as with these most recent amendments now, short term rentals are prohibited in both and then owner occupancy is also slowly being whittled away. I think generally as Andy said, the intent is for there to be flexibility to rent to longer term or permanent tenants.

Any other questions from commissioners? Seeing none, do we have any public comment?

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. I have received one speaker slip. As a reminder to the attendees on the Zoom webinar, if you'd wish to speak to this item, please use the raise hand feature, and I will call upon you. Speaking first in person, I have Tara Rengifo. Madam Vice Chair, do have one hand raised on Zoom. Jay Ryderbeck, if you could please unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes. Thank you.

Thank you, commissioners. I just wanted to indicate that staff, advanced planning staff, does a phenomenal job interpreting and deciphering what these new state laws are seemingly every year or every other year. And, in a new role that I have out of state, in Tennessee, there are a d ADU laws that are coming in, they're a few years behind. But it's always good to go back and see how advanced planning staff has dealt with these state laws and gotten the city's general plan or zoning ordinance up to date and compliant. And whenever these laws are rolled out in Tennessee here, I always go and do some r and d, rip off and duplicate, knowing that, advanced planning staff there has really done a great job and, and really thoughtful in how they, they write these codes.

So I just wanted to acknowledge that, that their their work is is very much appreciated. Thank you.

And Madam Vice Chair, I have no further public speakers. Thank you.

Very good. Then, do we want to go into deliberations? Any commissioners wish to speak about this matter? Commissioner Penman, please.

I'd just like to thank staff as well, and, really appreciate that you're limiting the changes to just what the state is mandating and not doing bigger changes. It's unfortunate that we have to just comply, but, I appreciate you keeping it down to the very minimum.

Commissioner Maynard?

If you're ready for a motion, I'm happy to make one.

Okay.

I'd like to make a motion to adopt the Planning Commission Resolution Number 25 entitled Resolution of the Planning Commission of the City of Galita, California recommending that the City Council adopt an ordinance amending section seventeen-forty one-thirty of the Galita Municipal Code relating to accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units in the city and finding the action to be statutorily exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act under Public Resources Code section 21,080.17, case number 20 ORD. I wish I also probably close public comment.

Okay, we will close the public comment and go into the deliberations and the motion.

Vice Chair Miller, we actually need to close the public hearing.

We will close the public hearing and now go into commissioner deliberations and motion.

Can I second the motion?

Mr. Norman, could we have a roll call vote, please?

Yes. Thank you, commissioners. Please do remember to lock in your votes, beginning with Commissioner Maynard. Aye. Thank you. Commissioner Pendeman? Aye. Commissioner Sorotkin?

Aye.

Thank you. And Vice Chair Miller?

Aye. Thank you. Okay. We will now move back to item B1, which is the local coastal program workshop. And we will receive a presentation from staff, and we will allow for public comments and provide feedback on the city's local coastal program.

So this is not something that we will take action on tonight, but we will it's a public workshop for all of us to look at this issue. So I'd like to turn it over to the staff to begin the workshop.

Hello, Vice Chair and Commissioners, and welcome to the public that's here in attendance and also to the public that's online. We're glad to see everybody. I'm to introduce your team. Of course, I'm Ann Wells, advanced planning manager, and we have the whole advanced planning team Andy Newkirk, supervising planner and Cam Adraw and Molly Cunningham, assistant planners. And then we have Rachel Hollander.

She's here from RRM Design Group, and they are helping us with the local coastal program. Mainly, it's Rachel who's been supporting us for a long time now with our local coastal program project. And I wanted to flag that many of our projects are not just the team that you see sitting at the dais. It's usually involving other departments, because they're just a little bit more complex like that, that they affect other people. And in this case, it's definitely not an exception.

Every department is affected because our guiding policy document that is addressing the vision of our future is being amended. Granted, it was originally intended to serve as a local coastal program. That's why we're here for the workshop, is we're going to talk about what all that means. But we did our best to set it up for success as an LCP. And so now we're just in the final stages, working with the Coastal Commission staff, who's also dedicated many, many hours and years to this process.

So I just wanted to flag that, because we're now in the open, so to speak, where we weren't of like grueling through line by line. And now it's going to be all of our projects. So it's your project, and it's the city council's project, or will be, and the public's, and other agencies as they want to or need to participate. So we'll all make it work together and with the Coastal Commission staff. And I wanted to make sure everyone knew that we have a website for the project.

And I'm going to just going to explain the link. If you get on the city of Galita website and you look under your city, click on the planning department planning and environmental review. And then if you click on the advanced planning link, you'll get to the local coastal program project. And if you click on that page, you can save it, but that page will take you will have has all the staff reports and other information, and will be like a of a history of our meetings that we have in all the future workshops we have for you. And then we also have a project email.

So if you have questions or you have comments throughout this process, it's lcpcityofgalita dot gov. And that email was included in the announcement for this workshop. So that's the interdiction that I have. And if we can just get right into the agenda, I will walk you through that, vice chair. The format is a little bit different because it's a lot of material.

We're breaking up the topics in different workshops. So what we want to do is have the staff presentation that's iterative with the commission and the public. So we'll have stopping points. I think there are four unique stopping points. The questions that are in the staff report, we'll just go through them one by one on a page.

And then at the end of, I guess, for one page of questions, we will take your feedback and then the public's feedback and then move on. And that perspective so Andy from Newkirk and I will be really kind of presenting most of the or all of the presentation. But Cam and Molly and Rachel are kind of specialized and prepared for different of the topics because it's a lot. So when there's if there's questions, they'll be helping us. But I just wanted to flag that.

We have a lot of resources here. And I should have mentioned that there's, besides the drinks and the snacks over near the foyer, there's also some handouts that I think are probably important to you some of you, at least. Like, there's maps so that you can take them home and look at them and really kind of digest where this project is applicable to in the coastal zone. And then also the policy topics with the underlying strike through that we're going to be reviewing tonight. And there's a few other things over there.

So please help yourself. And if you have questions you want to ask someone, give Rachel a tap on the shoulder, and they'll figure out who can go and talk with you over in the foyer. So don't hesitate to do that. If there's something burning tonight that you want to ask a question, it is a workshop, so we'd like to be able to do that as much as we can in this more confined arrangement for a public workshop. And then we'll conclude with the agenda tonight with next steps, because those are important to this long term project.

So if we can get to the right.

Oh, no, I got it. I'm fine. Oh, Okay. The next slide is the workshop purpose. And of course, what we really want to do is to introduce you and the public to the concept and the significance of a local coastal program.

And Andy is going to walk you through the detail on that, because it's really important. And then we want to get some initial feedback from you on the revisions of those three topic areas that I had mentioned. And then, of course, we want to talk about workshop number two, because there's still a bunch of topics left to review. And that's that. So workshop purpose, we're going to so the project background, Andy is going to run you through.

There's a number of slides, but I think they're really, really important. And there's some questions that we have for you at the end of that presentation.

Thanks, Anne. And as Anne mentioned, as a kind of a percentage of the staff report, the background's fairly lengthy compared to our normal staff reports. And we're going to take some time here to make sure that everyone really understands what this project is. It's been around for a long time. The acronym LCP has been mentioned probably a lot.

But I don't know that we've ever come to the Planning Commission to really walk the Planning Commission through what an LCP is. If so, it's been a long, long time. So, we want to make sure that everyone kind of understands what this all is, introduce the Planning Commission and the public to kind of the concepts and the significance and the issues involved with an LCP so that we kind of have a base of understanding as we go into what revisions might be needed to our policies. So a little background on the Coastal Act. This is very high level.

The Coastal Commission, who kind of oversees implementation of the Coastal Act, established in 1972. The Coastal Act of 1976 made that commission a permanent agency with fairly broad regulatory authority within the coastal zone. So, know, their kind of authority is that coastal zone. It's a thin strip of land all the way up and down the California coastline. And really, that kind of governance looks at things like development, habitat protection, public access, environmental quality.

So, some kind of big themes we'll be hearing about a lot as we talk about the LCP. We'll have a map here in a second. But kind of to get the scope and scale of our coastal zone, part of the city is in the coastal zone. We're a split jurisdiction. That's fairly common in this area in particular.

The county, city of Santa Barbara have split jurisdictions. Carpinteria is fully in the coastal zone. 19% of the area of the city is within the coastal zone and about 12.8 of all parcels. Kind of a lesser percentage of all development occurs within the coastal zone because when you look at the map, a lot of the coastal zone is fairly developed. There's not too many kind of vacant parcels and a lot of you think your bigger projects of late, both commercial and residential, have been outside of the coastal zone, but we do see development within the coastal zone as well.

And kind of under the Coastal Act, most development within the coastal zone requires a coastal development permit, and this is kind of there's going be a list of acronyms here that you're going to hear a lot. We will try to spell things out, but you're going to get acronyms. CDP is the kind of our shorthand permit term, and that's everywhere in the coastal zone. Talk about CDPs. So there may be other approvals that are needed, but kind of the fundamental permit in the coastal zone is going be your coastal development permit or CDP.

So within the city this might be a little bit hard to see on the screen. For those here, planning commissioners and public, you can go look at the big mural map on the side of council chambers here to get a really fine resolution of the city boundary and the coastal zone boundary. There's really kind of three distinct disconnected areas in the city within the coastal zone. Kind of going from west to east, the biggest portion of our coastal zone area is in Western Galita, starting with the Bakara property, going east, Sandpiper Golf Course. And then I think what the coastal zone boundary kind of bisects what people would kind of think of as the Elwood neighborhood.

It kind of zigzags through. So you'll have two properties right next to each other on a street in Elwood. One will be in the coastal zone, one will be outside the coastal zone. There's also a little bit north of 101, Winchester Commons, just a little sliver of that. And then you go over and the next little segment is Stork Ranch.

So most of the development along the east and west sides of Stork Road will be outside the coastal zone, but Stork Ranch is within the coastal zone. And then you fly across the airport and you're going to get parts of Old Town are in the coastal zone. When you think of Old Town as like Hollister Avenue, that commercial corridor is not in except for Jiffy Lube and Buenos Aires on the Southwest corner of Hollister and Fairview. And then kind of further south in Old Town, you'll have some of that industrial area that's pretty constrained by the airport. And then a little bit on Ward Drive in the mobile home park kind of south there by Atascadero is also in the coastal zone.

So, are kind of your areas when we're talking about that 19% of the city, those are the areas we're talking about. We also wanted to kind of highlight and you'll hear under different topic areas, there's particular a lot of policies that will have specific significance to those coastal like that coast adjacent developed properties, right? And this will come up a lot when we talk about like public access to the coast and coastal hazards. Those are two topics we're not discussing tonight, but we want the public and the Planning Commission to keep in mind that some of these policies that we'll be talking about have specific significance to those properties right along the coastline. So there's really, directly along our coastline it's almost two miles, but it's really three different properties.

The Ritz Carlton Baqara, which on the map is Site 1, and this is a map from our general plan. Site 3 is Sandpiper Golf Course and Site 4 is the city owned Elwood Mesa Open space. And then there's also a fairly close to the ocean that Site 2 is the Elwood onshore facility, we'll be talking about that a little bit under oil and gas later. So just wanted to kind of highlight that there are these kind of we only have these, like, really three property owners, one of them being us with property right along the shore. So what are we talking about when we say an LCP?

What is kind of the scope of a local coastal program? When the Coastal Commission reviews our LCP, they'll be reviewing it for consistency with Chapter three of the Coastal Act. So, it's a part of the the Coastal Act includes a lot of procedural requirements, all kinds of various things, and then there's these specific topic areas in chapter three. And we kind of summarize them on this slide, so one of the big ones you'll see is public access. So, more familiar, if you're familiar with kind of the public access concepts of the Coastal Act, it's actually ensuring that people can get to the shore.

You'll hear stories out of areas like Malibu a lot about allowing or not allowing the public to access the shore, but it's a little broader than that because it also considers low cost visitor access such as lodging and recreational uses of the coastline. So, it's a bit broader. And again, coastal recreation is also specifically called out as well in that chapter three. The third item is marine environment. The city of Galita ends at the ordinary high water mark, so we don't directly regulate the near coast ocean.

But one of the things that the Coastal Act considers is water quality impacts to that marine environment. So there is an onshore component when thinking about the marine environment. The fourth item is environmentally sensitive habitat areas. We'll talk quite a bit about that tonight. I think everyone understands, broadly speaking, what we mean there. Next item, agricultural and timberlands. You will not hear us talking about these two topics. We do not have timberlands in the city. We do have agriculture. We have no agriculturally zoned sites in the coastal zone.

So, for purposes of looking at our LCP, we won't be talking about agriculture. Next is archaeological and paleontological resources. That's a topic we'll be discussing briefly tonight. Scenic and visual resources, another major item in chapter three. As is industrial development, not a huge topic area for us to discuss.

There's some provisions to support coastal dependent industrial uses except for oil and gas. So we'll talk about oil and gas a little bit, but not more broadly about industrial development along the coastline. And then a more recent addition to chapter three was consideration of sea level rise and climate impacts. So that'll come up at a subsequent workshop talking about coastal hazards, which includes some of your sea level rise and climate impacts. So again, broadly speaking, is kind of the main thrust of when we talk about an LCP.

We'll talk about what an LCP is in a slide here, but these are kind of the subject matter that we're looking at. So, structure, what is an LCP? It's kind of there's really two big parts to an policy and regulation. If you think about our existing documents, you'd be talking general plan and zoning. So, it's kind of those two main fundamental planning documents.

When you talk about the policy, it's often referred to as the land use plan component. We often don't use LUP when we're talking about the land use plan component because that's also our most common permit is an LUP. So we often use CLUP, Coastal Land Use Plan, as kind of that policy side of the LCP. And then implementation plan is the regulatory piece of the LCP, so that may be referred to as the IP. Again, think like zoning that really drilled down specifics where your policy is a little more high level, regulation, more specific, how do you implement those policies?

So, very similar to your general plan and your zoning. That's really those two pieces of the LCP. So, as promised in that last hearing, we would talk about CDPs, that coastal development permit. And that's the main permit. That's the permit under the Coastal Act that is really in question here.

So, right now, we do not have permit authority over we cannot issue or approve or issue CDPs in the city. We do not have that authority. Only the Coastal Commission has that authority right now. What typically happens is an applicant does not go straight to the Coastal Commission, we do a review in concept locally. So, we review a project under our general plan and zoning and then kind of work that through the process and then after the approvals in concept locally, then they would go to Coastal.

And kind of the idea there is that's like a vetting process, so it's not just Coastal Commission seeing this brand new project, that we have kind of worked it through and made sure that standards are being met and the issues are being addressed. But we cannot actually issue that permit, that fundamental approval in the coastal zone. Once we're certified, generally speaking, we will have the authority to approve and issue coastal development permits. So, we would then get that authorization. And

when

we talk about once certified, it's the California Coastal Commission that would certify our LCP, right? It would be at a public hearing a big public hearing in front of the Coastal Commission. There are some caveats to that permit authority that we would get for the coastal zone within the city. There is a small amount of area that's referred to as retained jurisdiction that we will not have permit authority over, and those are tidelands and lands where the public trust may exist. That's what the coastal act states.

There is also the potential for the CDPs that we approve to be appealed to the Coastal Commission. So, usually when staff issues a permit, an appeal would go to, say, Planning Commission or if Planning Commission approves a project, an appeal would go to city council. Once we're certified, those appeals could go to the California Coastal Commission. The Coastal Commission could basically re review the application on their own. There's four there's really five categories, but only four that are relevant to the city.

The first is and again, this is perm appeal authority for the Coastal Commission is development between the sea and the first public road paralleling the sea or within 300 feet of the inland extent of any beach or meet high tide of the sea where there is no beach, whichever distance is greater. So I think in Public first Public Road, 300 feet. Those are kind of measuring sticks. Development on tidelands, submerged lands, public trust lands within 100 feet of any wetland, estuary, stream or within 300 feet of the top of the seaward face of any coastal bluff development located in a sensitive resource area, so not necessarily adjacent but in a sensitive resource area. I'm not going to go through the whole list.

It gets long there. And development constituting a major public works project, which is defined in the law. So, we put in the staff report and have up on the screen kind of the latest version of those jurisdictions from the county. So, we would work with Coastal Commission staff if updates are needed to this. They have a whole mapping unit that would come further downstream, but we wanted to give folks a little bit of an idea of kind of what that jurisdiction looked like historically within the county at least.

So, on this map, the orange area it's a little hard to see. There's a few places by Bell Canyon and Tekelodeon Creek kind of slew areas and and DeVos, so a little sliver there, and then in Southern Old Town where there would potentially be retained jurisdiction where we wouldn't actually get permit authority even once we were certified. And then the purple is where is the appeals jurisdiction. And so that means if you can see, it's a little bit hard, but everywhere in Old Town would still at least be in the appeals jurisdiction and then almost everything out in Western Galita. So actually, the vast majority of the coastal zone in the city would still be within that appeals jurisdiction.

It doesn't mean projects would get appealed, so it doesn't mean that everything would still go to coastal, but that path would still potentially be available in those areas.

Before Andy switches off this map, I wanted to flag before he showed you a map of Western Galita and those shoreline parcels, It was really Bukara And Sandpiper and Elwood Onshore facility parcel and Elwood Mesa. And I wanted to flag when we talk about coastal development permits and issuing coastal development permits, it's to the area that we're showing you on this map. And we don't issue permits at the equivalent rate as we comparing the 19% of the city that's in the coastal zone versus the rest of the city. And a lot of it's because it's open space for Elwood Mesa. We did that on incorporation.

That was a huge thing for the city. A lot of other things has already developed. But that doesn't mean so we don't there's not I mean, we have a lot of CDPs that we might get for the city for capital improvement projects or maybe for trail projects on Elwood Mesa. But I just wanted to flag that. The changes that we're talking about tonight, the new development isn't we just don't issue CDPs or we don't issue them, the Coastal Commission does.

We don't ask our applicants to go to the Coastal Commission on a regular basis. So they do every year. There's going to be a handful or so, including us. But it's like I said, it's not at the same pace as we're taking development to the city council or to the planning commission.

All right. So, moving on, kind of as Anne had mentioned, we're not starting from scratch with an LCP right now. The general plan was developed with the idea that it would serve as that policy side of the LCP, that Coastal Land Use Plan portion. So, that was always the intent, when that document was prepared in the early 2000s and adopted in 2006. And something that people may never have noticed in the general plan, but after every policy and sub policy there is a bracketed acronym or a couple acronyms.

And so, there's kind of three different options in the general plan currently. One is GP, which is meant to be just the general plan. One is CP, which is meant just to be the coastal land use plan, and those are very rare. There's only one or two. And the other is a combined GPCP, which is meant to apply as part of the general plan policy but also serve as a policy within the coastal land use plan. And so it's really when we're talking about the city's Coastal Land Use Plan, that policy portion of the LCP, we're really talking the baseline is anything in the general plan that has a CP or a GP backslash CP. So those are you know, anything that's a CP is what we're talking, the starting point for this conversation about the LCP.

And not to jump ahead on the product that we submit to the Coastal Commission eventually for certification, we won't have any combined GPC slash CPs because every time that we have to or need to amend the general plan, if it's, say, for something in the northern part of the city and we have an amendment for it, then we would have to go to the Coastal Commission. And that can take some time to package it up, to have them review it, and to get on their agenda. And we have to go first. So it adds a lot of time. So we'll make sure that whatever that package is, that there isn't overlap so that we can have.

We're also sensitive. We don't want two documents that over time become completely different. But we'll talk about form later and make sure that the form works for the community, because it's everyone's general plan. We don't want to presuppose how it might look. We just know that we need to be clear what is applicable in the coastal zone for the reasons I stated.

Thanks. And so when the city the city didn't formally submit the general plan as the coastal land use plan for certification in 'six when the general plan was adopted originally, in large part because the city didn't have the corresponding regulations done. We did that in 2020. So now we have kind of this baseline foundational policy document and zoning regulations as a kind of a starting point for where we are tonight. So significance of certification for the city, kind of why are we doing this, what that means.

Fundamentally, kind of almost philosophical is that this is what we're supposed to do. We're a coastal jurisdiction. Coastal jurisdictions are supposed to get a certified LCP. We are not the only jurisdiction that is not certified, but we are in the minority. We're also fairly young still, but it is an expectation of coastal jurisdictions to receive a certified LCP from the Coastal Commission.

The Coastal Act says jurisdiction within the coastal zone are supposed to prepare an LCP, right? So, basic good governance, we should be doing that. Practically speaking, big benefit is we get that permit authority in the coastal zone, right? So, that 19% by area, 12.8% by parcel, we will actually be able to approve and issue CDPs. So that's a big deal.

As Anne mentioned, there are there is like a practical drawback as well. We'll be less nimble in terms of policy and regulation once certified because we can't just make we won't be able to make changes just at the local level that can be implemented with projects. Once we're certified, when we change what's certified, that's considered an LCP amendment, which then has to go back for a Coastal Commission approval. So, where now, if we're amending policy or regulation, you know, we have a Planning Commission hearing, City Council hearing, depending if it's ordinance or regulation a policy, one hearing, maybe a second reading, but it's done locally. We would have to still do that process but then go to the Coastal Commission to kind of get those changes approved essentially.

And it's not a given that they will approve such changes. They may approve them with modifications, for instance. And if they approve them with modifications, then we have to come back around and approve those modifications before they can be implemented. So there is procedurally those changes in the future will become certainly a longer process and a little more complicated of a process. So we'll lose some of our nimbleness and ability to kind of make quick pivots on our policy and regulation.

And to kind of bring that message home, we talked about accessory dwelling unit regulations. When we're certified, then we'll have to go take those amendments to the Coastal Commission. And that can be tricky, the accessory dwelling units. Plus, they're changing it so frequently, so we have to stay up on top of it. And our Title 17 cleanup amendments, for example, if we also chose to apply them to the regulations in the coastal zone.

So these will be questions we ask later on when we talk about form. But because I think this slide's important, it gives some context of how having a certified LCP helps us and also how it can have some drawbacks. But we'll tackle those drawbacks, those procedural drawbacks, at a later date. But it is something to think about. Or housing element, for example. That also housing element directly doesn't go. But as there's policy that form a constraint, for example, then we will have to, as other jurisdictions in the coastal zone are doing, have to work with the Coastal Commission staff on some of those things.

Pivoting a little bit to get a little more narrow into actually the stuff we'll be talking about tonight, we want to just highlight kind of so we got the baseline in the general plan with the idea that many of those policies will serve as the coastal land use plan. In 2014, the city received a grant from the Coastal Commission to work on the LCP. There were several pieces to that grant, one of which we just put on the screen here because it's a cool document, was the Coastal Hazards Vulnerability Assessment and Fiscal Impact Report, which we adopted in 2015. So that's an existing city document that looked at things like where sea level rise would impact the city under different future scenarios, time horizons, and severity of sea level rise, and kind of the fiscal impacts and possible ways to address those impacts in the future. We also started a back and forth with Coastal Commission staff on those policies within our general plan, that kind of the city headed vision to serve as that coastal land use plan portion of the LCP.

And so there is that back and forth led to extensive proposed revisions or recommended revisions from Coastal Commission staff and just procedurally, Coastal Commission staff does not certify our LCP, but they do prepare a staff report with a recommendation much like we do. They recommend to the Coastal Commission, and so, their input is is significant in terms of that moving forward to eventual certification. And so there is proposed revisions to all elements but noise in housing. Housing elements are exempt from the LCP. Noise just it doesn't when you think about those topic areas we were talking about before, it doesn't really fit directly in those topic areas.

And so the grant ended with back and forth and a submittal of a draft IP, but really the back and forth and the specific input and underlying strike through was on the policies. And so, that's what you're seeing as those attachments to the staff report. Post grant, there was further back and forth and so there's feedback as recently as earlier this year. And so kind of what you see in the tables that are attached to the staff report is kind of the latest and greatest recommendations for policy revisions for, as they say, for kind of Chapter three Coastal Act consistency. And we're going to be talking about tables a lot tonight and in the future.

Kind of the way their review went is they didn't review like our elements, they reviewed topic areas. So, kind of all policy, sub policy related to a given topic was put in a table and then there was kind of this back and forth underlying strike through commenting. And so, these are the 10 tables that Coastal Commission staff reviewed and in bold here are the three that are included in the staff report tonight. Kind of by length, ESHA, public access, and safety were the longest, but there's significant edits along the way on all of these topic areas. And so that's kind of how we're presenting the proposed revisions.

Again, these are the Coastal Commission staff proposed revisions based on these different topic areas. And so that is how we're presenting these. We're just going in alphabetical order just down through these tables and we thought three would be enough on this first night to kind of get started on this conversation. So, with that, that is the end of this background and, again, we wanted to we're taking some time here admittedly, but we want to make sure that everyone really understands what this project is, where we're coming from, where we've been, where we're going. And so, this is the first touch point where we're kind of we welcome commission questions and comments and then also any comments or questions from the public related just to this background, not into the substance of the revisions yet.

But we want to make sure everyone understands kind of what we're doing here tonight.

So, let's go to the commissioners first and see what kind of questions you might have before we go to the public. Does anybody? Commissioner Maynard? That was

a really solid background. Thank you so much. So actually, I only have one clarifying question. Back on slide eight, where you were talking about the different topics, and you touched very briefly industrial development. And I know we don't have a lot of large industrial other than oil and gas. But in the portion of Old Tongalita in the coastal zone, we do have some light industrial and general industrial. Can you talk about how light and general industrial fits in with the industrial development category?

Commissioner Maynard, yeah, we can pulp the language in a minute. I think a lot of it focuses on supporting coastal dependent industrial. So it's really that shoreline, you know, that where you really need access to the water. So, kind of the industrial zoning in Old Town has not been a big topic. I will note though, not every policy has been reviewed by Coastal Commission staff.

There are some policies, particularly like land use descriptions, like land use categories within the coastal zone. They looked at our visitors serving land use description and there's edits regarding that, but they haven't looked at all of those and haven't looked at the allowable use tables in the land use element, for instance. So, not everything's been reviewed, but that part of chapter three is really focused on that coastal dependent. And while oil and gas and that's why we're playing oil and gas is kind of treated a little bit differently because it is a coastal dependent use, industrial use, so it's kind of a carve out to that general support in the coastal act for coastal dependent industrial.

Thank you.

Commissioner Peneman.

Yeah, you mentioned that being able to issue our own CDPs is a good thing. What are some of the benefits of that?

Commissioner Pemberton, would say kind of an initial being a city and growing up is being able to issue permits for development within our own city, that we're the final arbiter and we have the say. So, I think that fundamentally is an important thing. Second, also, we kind of have this two step process now and so that includes added time, added cost, added uncertainty. So not to say that everything will be cheaper, you know, there's gonna be potentially more limitations on what you can do in the coastal zone. So maybe what you wanna wanna do, you won't be able to do.

And there might be added requirements locally, but the idea would be that we would get rid of this two step process where we would be in concept and then you would actually have to go through another application, another completeness determination, another review with a whole separate

approval entity. So, streamline the process. That's right. Okay, thanks.

Commissioner Sorotkin.

I did have one question. You did say that housing is excluded. Do we know I see this look on your face. But at this point, given the coastal zone that you were showing the map of, is there anything at this point being proposed within of housing within that coastal? And what is there anything, any aspect of it that can be, you know, permitted or not permitted?

So, Commissioner Saracan, before answering your question, point of clarification is the housing element is not included in the LCP, but in but things like development standards that can make or break housing will likely be reviewed and particularly as part of the implementation plan. So, you know, what you know, how dense, how big, those things still have a huge role in housing development and so that will be looked at presumably, particularly as part of the IP. To your question about any pending projects, not that I'm aware of, we do have housing element sites in the coastal zone, so there's a few vacant sites that are zoned for housing in Elwood. Smaller sites, not like the big rezone sites that people may be thinking of with the housing element project, but there are a few. And theoretically, as anyone was mentioning, ADUs, so there's a lot of there's still a lot of residential in the coastal zone that may want to do additional housing or redevelopment for densification that still will need those projects are not inherently exempt from CDPs, right?

That's not what we're saying. It's just the housing element in and of itself. But the other kind of aspects of housing, there is certainly a tension between kind of state priorities of those resource protections and access in the coastal zone and the expectation of housing development. So that is a tension that I think coastal jurisdictions really have to struggle with and keep long range planners quite busy.

I have a couple of questions. You know, you go back to this very jagged line that is the boundary for the coastal zone, and it's just totally befuddling to me as to why they created such a jagged line. And as you mentioned, there are houses in the Elwood area that one could be in the coastal zone and the other one across the street can't be. I live in a development. I live in the hideaway development, which is all in the coastal zone.

And I know that the developer had to jump through many, many hoops to comply with the Coastal Commission. And we live with a lot of those decisions in perpetuity in our development because we are in the coastal zone, and so there's certain things that we can and cannot do that were developed in sync with our land development plan with the city. We had to comply with the Coastal Commission requirements as well. But yet, across the street from us, as we go closer down towards Ellwood School, those properties there, which several are vacant, are not in the coastal zone. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to me how one property so close to another will have to be so compliant with what the Coastal Commission requires, and yet a property just across the street or maybe even next door doesn't have to comply.

It really seems as though it's going to

be

very cumbersome for developments for a lot of reasons that one developer doesn't have to comply, another developer does. Is there any type of and then with these new requirements that you're going to talk to us about, new changes in this plan, when will that take place? For instance, we have the Sandpiper Golf Course that is going to go through some major revisions. And the Sandpiper Golf Course is totally located in the coastal zone. So they have to get coastal commission authority before they can redo all of their redevelopment.

So are they going to be required under the old laws or the new laws? And there's a lot of unknowns here as far as I can see. There's a lot of inconsistencies. So I'm just wondering how the city will deal with those inconsistencies and how the Coastal Commission might deal with those inconsistencies and how that might all work. Get your thoughts on any of that. Does any yeah, I hope that makes sense. I know it's very

I think we can give a few thoughts based on that. Okay,

thank you.

So, first of all, the boundary, for better or worse, is defined under statute, and with it you know, it was adopted with the Coastal Act. It can be amended, but it's amended by statute. So, it's not something that just gets changed on a whim or very easily. There's actually a whole section, you know, just for Santa Barbara County amendments to the Coastal Zone about its own section in the Coastal Act. And you actually see there's actually a little island within the Coastal Zone that's not in the Coastal Zone for university housing.

And that was done that was removed from the coastal zone by a Coastal Act amendment, right? So not something that's done easily. It's certainly not something we've been thinking about trying to get changed. It is what it is for the most part, barring a legislative act. So there is an oddity. There always is going to be. There's going to be a boundary, whether it's a clear highway boundary. There's always going be a boundary where on one side of it you're in the coastal zone, one side you're not. And certainly, at least different permit requirements are going to apply, if not different standards.

But I'll add to that, that I think what you're saying is it seems a bit haphazard in some locations. And I think you're right. If you look at even on a creek or something, you look for topography or biology or land use patterns. I mean, granted, land use patterns change a lot since the Coastal Act was adopted. But I think it is what it is.

And like Andy said, not right now in the business of tackling something that's pretty formidable. But I agree that in many cases, it doesn't just follow a street one street and then drop down another street, because probably maybe the streets weren't there.

And then in terms of kind of process for something like a sandpiper, they're well underway under their review. And they're being reviewed locally, that in concept review. And it'll have to go to Coastal Commission. So, until we're certified and we still have a lot of work to do, that question's about like how something gets processed. You know, that'll eventually change the certification, but right now, that's how project is going to go.

There may be a question as we get closer to the finish line as to projects in review and where how that will work. It's kind of like when we adopted Title 17, it's like there's all kinds of pending projects. Are these projects going to be reviewed under the old county code or the new city code? So we'll tackle that when we get closer. But that project is I think the EIR is out. So that project's well underway.

And that's very helpful. I know it is just what it is and whatever. But just in terms of part of the coastal commission, I know, is to protect that coastline, Okay? It was to protect it. But when you've got these jagged boundary lines, and if let's just say one of the properties that's not in the coastal commission, not in the coastal boundary wants to do something, some development on their property that may affect somehow the property that is in the coastal zone.

And it's going to hinder it some way or it's going to harm it in some way, Is there going to be a process that somehow the city can review development that's right next to the coastal zone maybe not in it, but right next to it that it can determine whether it's going to be harmful to something that is in the coastal zone, if that makes sense? Or is that a part of what the EIR would figure out? I don't know.

Vice Chairman Miller, I guess I would say, you know, and certainly the way our policies are written now. And, you know, there may be some further split in the future. Like you look at our ESHA policies like we'll talk about tonight, there's only one ESHA policy that's different coastal and inland right now. It's the wetland standard, the wetland buffers. The other policies apply inland as well.

It's not as if we're not going to apply OSHA standards inland. It's not know, we're nothing's been contemplated about dramatically different development standards inland versus coastal. Currently, the height standards are uniform across the city in all zones. So whether you're meaning whether you're in the inland area and another term sometimes we use is inland areas that 81% that's not in the coastal zone. But like our height standards, our density standards are same inland and coastal.

The triggers for when you need a discretionary entitlement versus a nondiscretionary entitlement, inland and coastal are the same. So, you know, I'm not sure if we've contemplated kind of those what you're getting at is like that boundary question, but I would just say as a general matter, it's, you know, we have all these standards are the same right now, when you look at that general plan except very rare instance, like the wetland buffer is one that's different in Flint and Coastal right now. But other standards, so we might be splitting a little bit from that in the future, but it's not as if we won't have, you know, and like when you look at like design review board and neighborhood compatibility, you know, when we look when DRB looks at neighborhood compatibility, they're not gonna just put a black screen up in front of a prop a neighboring property that's in the coastal zone. You know, would still look at that compatibility with the adjacent properties. So it wouldn't be as if we don't we just say, oh, that's just a totally different concept in the coastal zone.

We still would be thinking about those proximity things the same way.

So, that term compatibility is still going to be very, very important, is what you're saying?

Vice Chair Merrell, yes, where there's discretionary review, of course.

Yes.

But, yes. I mean, we wouldn't just split out our analysis that way.

Okay. Okay, thank you. And I'll finish this topic off with the projects, the coastal zone and the local coastal program, what we have in the policies and regulations that would apply there. The form of that is something we're going to talk about later, like how that is presented. And we can do whatever we want to do in the inland area when it comes to well, we can't do anything we want to do. But how policies are or are not applicable in the inland area really our decision making authority.

Okay. Do commissioners have any other questions before we go to the public? Okay. Mr. Norman, if you can let us know if there's any public comment, please.

Yes. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Have received a total of five speaker slips. And as a reminder, to those on the webinar, if you wish to speak to this item, please use the raise hand feature, and I will call upon you. Just on the background of the LCP for now. Thank you, Mr. Newkirk. Speaking first, have Christina McGuire. You okay. Hugh? Okay. In that case, Michael Johnson? Understood? Tara? Okay. Thank you. Brian? Okay. And I do see Madam Vice Chair, one hand raised on Zoom again, and is just for the background of the LCP for those on

the Zoom

webinar. Jay Ritterbeck, if you wish to speak on the background of LCP, you'll have three minutes. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Miller and Commissioners. Right now, we have a project that's going through permitting in the coastal zone. And dealing with coastal commission and city staff is a burden. So having a certified LCP would simplify it. So we are looking forward to that to occur at some point in the future.

However, some of the California Coast Commission's recommendations are very strict and a lot of new language. And just simply adopting the language from the Coastal Commission to get an LCP, to get the local jurisdiction to do permitting without really making those policies Galita specific. Again, just to get an LCP, just get one. You kind of go back to the reason why the city of Galita incorporated and separated out from the county a long time ago. When the city incorporated, it adopted a very detailed general plan because and it and it and it pulled over the county's zoning ordinance, which did not have a Goleta focus on it.

So in that case, the the specificity of the general plan was very appropriate. It really served as that Galita specific document, the tailored development for Galita's character. And again, that's why the city incorporated it, because there was a jurisdictional authority over Galita that did not have Galita specific goals in mind. So I just want to caution just adopting what the Coastal Commission puts out there just to get a certified LCP could be a little bit shorter sighted than a little bit of a longer process to really tailor these individually, each policy to be more GALIDA sensitive. And yeah, in general, that really detailed general plan was very useful, but most general plans and coastal land use plans are more general.

The specificity of all these policies are typically pulled into the implementation plan or the zoning ordinance that really gives the tools to implement the general policies and general goals of that general plan. So just kind of in general, giving that frame of reference as this progresses through. Thank you very much.

Yes, Commissioner Maynard.

One of the things that we've noticed with, say, the housing ordinance is we don't have a lot of ability to push back there. The state has kind of told us what needs to be in the housing element, and we sort of have to do that in order to stay up to date with housing. How much negotiating power do we have with the local coastal plan? Do we feel like we can go back and forth with the Coastal Commission on this? Or do we feel like this is fairly rigid and we need to accept most of what's coming from the Coastal Commission?

Director Imhoff might want to weigh in on this, but I think we are planning on returning back to the Coastal Commission staff, and they know that we're having this workshop. They may be watching, And then we'll share feedback additional feedback from us and lessons learned. And yes, I think it's always going to be like a kind of a fluid process. And I'll let Peter continue on with that response.

Thank you. And Commissioner Maynard, to your point, the Coastal Commission staff has been very flexible in working with us, and there has been, I think, a very productive dialogue with them so far. However, at the end of the day, of course, the Coastal Commission has the authority to certify or not certify a local coastal program, so at the end of the day, they have the final say. And Coastal Commission staff, of course, just like local staff, is a technical staff that makes a recommendation to the Commission itself and then the Commission makes a decision. It is very meaningful to have the Coastal Commission staff recommendation in our favor and I think the hope of both Coastal Commission staff and local staff is that what ultimately gets adopted here locally will meet with Coastal Commission staff support so that it can move smoothly through the adoption and certification process before the Commission.

Thank you for that.

Okay. Do we want to move on to the next item on your agenda?

Thank you, Vice Chair Miller. Yeah, and we're calling these topics. It's these 10. And again, we're breaking these out by tables of that review by Coastal Commission staff. And you'll notice one of the things we put in the staff report and at the beginning of each one of these topics is that Chapter three language that is relevant for the topic.

So, you can kind of see that's, again, kind of the guiding light in terms of what we have to achieve, what we have to meet from the coastal act itself. And so we'll start with archaeological and paleontological resources. I imagine I'm going to misstate that a couple times at least. And so here we have Coastal Act Section 302,444, where development would adversely impact archaeological or paleontological resources identified by the state historic preservation officer, reasonable mitigation measures shall be required. So that's kind of the fundamental language from the Coastal Act.

And, there are some updated language about definitions. Broadly speaking, archaeological, we're talking tribal cultural resources. Paleontology, we're talking like fossils, know, invertebrates, mammals, all those cool things that are laying in the soil beneath the city. So I wanted to actually and kind of the way these these slides will go is we'll kind of flag, like, proposed language that we think rises to the level of flagging. It's not exhaustive of the changes or what people may be supportive or concerned about.

I want to be very clear about that. There's no way we could have a slide deck that we could open without, you know, blowing up the computer if we had everything. And I did want to flag something that is kind of mentioned in the staff report and is not in the slide. We mentioned that there's a new policy for new development in the staff report. It's page one of attachment three.

It's the new OS eight. X. We said in the staff report that it closely mirrors the Coastal Act language. I did want to flag one provision, and this is going to be an item we're going to flag a few times on different tables. There's a sentence that says, If there's no feasible siting or design alternative that can eliminate all impacts to archaeological and paleontological resources, then the alternative that would result in the fewest or least adverse impacts shall be proposed or essentially by proposed shall be what gets approved, right?

This can be problematic. That kind of sounds a little bit like CEQUA alternatives analysis, but this is not CEQUA. This would be our own permitting process separate from CEQUA. So, there's an assumption about an alternatives analysis that is not contemplated in our policies or regulations and then it also requires the least, impactful alternative to be the project and that's for archaeological and paleontological. You're going to see similar language on various topics like visual impacts and coastal hazards impacts and there's a concern, first is what does that alternatives analysis look like and then what if the least impactful to archaeological and paleontological is not the least impactful for visual resources?

How do we do we kind of meet both of those requirements? So I just wanted to flag that that that and we'll we'll flag that again, moving forward that that language kind of sounds seque y. It's more rigid than seque because in seque, have to look at alternatives and identify a least damaging, you know, least damaging environmental alternative. You don't inherently have to approve that least damaging alternative. Right? There can be, like, statements of overriding consideration, etcetera. I just wanted to flag that that I think in the staff report we may be undervalued that new policy language.

Just because you brought that up right then and that was very interesting, can you would no project be something that would have to be considered like CEQA requires no project to be one of the options?

Commissioner Maynard, I don't think we have an answer for that. I think the devil would be in the IP probably, as to what that and probably not a no project. There's also, you know, especially in the Esha language, there's kind of a takings provision and a takings out. And we'd certainly, on any regulation, be concerned about mandating no development on a parcel. So I would flag that.

But I think how this how we would process a project under this policy, I think that would have to be worked out in our regulatory language. So, a couple of things that we flagged in the staff report. There's some expanded coordination and consultation, particularly with tribal cultural resources, that kind of the archaeological component. One added policy or sub policy flags different scenarios under which we would do tribal consultation. It's not fundamentally different than what's required under existing state law.

I mean, the staff report, we did flag that any designation of open space would require tribal consultation and that that's kind of new, that's not required currently. Although, like on second thought, presumably that would be a land use designation change. If it's a land use designation change, then that's a general plan amendment that under state law requires tribal consultation. But it is, kind of putting together various pieces of state law which could change, but, did want to flag that there's a little bit of expanded tribal cultural and then there's also, a broader consultation if, remains or tribal cultural resources are identified on a site during construction. And so that, kind of what that would look like, we would have to figure out if we're, if we have to consult with all tribes on the, the the state, list, that's like, that could be like 10 to 12 different tribal groups.

So it would vastly expand that process. So we wanted to flag that. That would be like kind of a during construction review that would then become much broader in scope. And we also wanted to flag that kind of the archaeology and paleontology kind of got split out a little more in these policies and there's a specific call out now for a paleontological evaluation report. We can't use PER because that's a department name, so we'll have to figure out an acronym for it, but this would be required for areas of known or suspected to contain paleontological resources.

So, again, it would be a new submittal requirement for certain applications and we need to spell out in our regulations when that would apply. Just by way of background, we require that right now. There's nothing called out in our zoning regulations for a specific report for paleontology. It does sometimes get reviewed in the CEQA process, but again, kind of not CEQA doesn't cure our need to include policy and regulation in the LCP. As far as the Coastal Commission is concerned, they look for consistency with Chapter three of their own Coastal Act.

We can't say, Oh, CEQA will cover it. That doesn't really get us to where they want us to get. But I just wanted to kind of by way of background, the Shelby Housing Project EIR was recently released and that did look at paleontology. An analysis was included in the geotechnical report and we do require a geotechnical report under our zoning regulations, but we don't call out anything specific for paleontology. And mitigation measures were flagged as part of that.

So, if anyone's interested in kind of some of that analysis there, that does go on, but this would have to get reconfigured as part of our permit requirements rather than just defaulting to any analysis in CEQA. So, it would add some certain submittal requirements and we'd have to tease out exactly what that would look like and what the triggers are for that report in our own regulations. So, that's it. This is one of the smaller tables. There's not too many changes.

It's really about open space policy aid. It's fairly contained within our general plan, and so we had some questions. Are there any concerns about the coordination requirements? Any concerns about the paleontology I messed it up paleontological evaluation report and any other feedback or questions there are about this specific topic area as it relates to the LCP.

Do any of the commissioners have any questions? Commissioner

besides the language that you flagged, the least impact alternative, are there any other changes here that weaken what we already have in our, coastal plan? It didn't seem like it.

Christian or Penman, I would maybe ask what you see as I don't think it lessens

We weakens the protections for these resources.

Don't think there is. I think if anything, it adds protections. And the reason we flag them is just thinking and we're trying to think about this in a lot of instances is added requirements, added protections versus like burdens and whether there's value in the added requirements. So, we that's kind of why we're flagging these things is like, you know, this makes more work for an applicant and kind of trying to think about, are we supportive of that in consideration of the added burdens that they'll place on the applicant?

Makes sense. Thank you.

And I think the second part of that response is, what does it do for the resource? And some of that, I think if we get more reports theoretically, then we would be in a position to where we might have to do something. And I think that will happen. We'll learn more about that when we get to the regulations.

You've already called out both in the staff report and in your presentation one of the concerns that I had, and I guess I'm just asking for a little follow-up in terms of options, but how to determine if an area has a known or suspected paleontological resource? Have we looked at best practices from other cities? Are there some options you're thinking about as to what that could look like? It seems like the intent is good, but if we don't have a way to identify those resources, trying to assess what the burden would be on a developer is hard to do. So I'm curious if you have any more thoughts on options.

Commissioner Maynard, we haven't delved too deep into this because there's a lot of topics here. But looking at the Shelby EIR as an example of where that report was tasked with looking at are there issues related to paleontology and if so, does there need to be mitigation? And so, in that document, they reference the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's Standard Procedures for the Assessment and Mitigation of Adverse Impacts to Paleontological Resources, which is a 2010 document. And then they also sought out information from, I believe, the Santa Barbara I'm going to Museum of Natural History. And then they looked at the soil types and the likelihood of the soil types on the site to have potential paleontological resources.

So there is some, you know, and they even talked about level of existing ground disturbance, and so are they going to go deeper than the existing ground disturbance, and then, you know, the soil type below the existing ground disturbance levels? So there may be some ways that we could articulate fairly objectively what the trigger would be, but we'd have to look more into it. We don't have a clear answer at this point.

Any other commissioner questions? Okay. Mr. Norman, do you want to see what the public would like to say?

Yeah, sure. As I mentioned, do have five speaker slips. However, of those names, I'm not sure which would like to speak to this particular aspect of the LCP. And again, as a reminder to the public on Zoom, if you do wish to speak, please use the raise hand feature, and

I will call upon you.

Madam Vice Chair, I'm seeing none on Zoom.

Okay. So we'll go on to the next topic then.

The next topic is environmentally sensitive habitat areas. Most of the policies in our existing general plan for ESHA, if you don't mind me using that acronym, are in the conservation element of the general plan. But starting with what we're trying to like the bar that we're trying to raise awareness of, and that's kind of driving the changes to the element or to the ESHA policies is from the Coastal Act. And essentially, what we're trying to do is protect ESHAs against significant disruption of habitat values and only allow uses that are dependent with those resources within the ESHAs. And then the second part is the development in the areas adjacent to the Esches and parks and recreation areas shall be sited and designed to prevent impacts, would significantly degrade these areas and shall be compatible with the continuance of these habitat and recreation areas.

Very policy, broad, big words, and without the detail, like what does it mean? What does this prevent impacts? What does that mean with the design? And so that's what the Coastal Commission staff is trying to help us with, is how to use this to and we used this when we built our general plan. And these coastal act sections are in the general plan as what we were trying to achieve.

But again, it can be interpreted a lot of different ways. So let's go to the next slide. And there are a lot of changes that are included in attachment four to your staff report under the environmentally sensitive habitat areas policies. And so we didn't cover everything in here. And you're always welcome anyone's welcome to make comments on these tables one way or another and get them to us, or keep coming to our workshops and keep providing feedback.

And so for the buffer sizes, we have a table that's showing the city's existing buffer. And then we call it proposed buffer. That's what the Coastal Commission staff had in their revisions. And kind of to capture our buffers right now, the buffers in the general plan are to ensure the biological integrity and preservation of the ESHA. And we apply the way we handle the buffer is resource dependent.

So it's not just one broad distance from the edge of an ESHA to protect. It's based on, again, in CE conservation element policy two through nine, they're very specific to the type of ESHA because the way we had it prepared was that not all ESHAs are the same. And so we also we have limits on the development in the ESHA. And then I think some of the stuff's in the staff report. But the way the Coastal Commission you can see it on the screen.

The way they proposed to amend just the buffers is the standard 100 foot in most cases. And I think we already had 100 feet. There's different nuances about what that means. And so it's not as static as 100 feet. But native grassland is a really big difference.

And then the coastal bluff and sage scrub and chaparral but we don't have any chaparral in the city it is 25 feet. So that's a big difference. And then for the raptor habitat, the same thing. We have 100 feet, but it could be reduced. And then a 300 foot buffer for construction activities during nesting.

And some residents might, if they're listening or hear, might have had some concerns with this, because they had to wait for something for a nest, an active nest that was across the through the neighborhood. And so there's already been some kind of all again, not all circumstances are suited for the same buffer, But this is the way we have adopted our buffer. And then what the coastal commission staff are recommending is at least 100 feet and then 500 feet for the construction activities during the nesting. Yeah. While we have some allowances for reducing the buffers, the coastal commissions were just a bit more restrictive.

And the only allowance for reduction would be to enable the city to avoid the claim of taking of private property. And that's a pretty strict standard and hard or maybe even expensive to prove. And then in those instances, if there was a takings argument, then the buffer reduction would be the minimum necessary to allow the development to avoid the unconstitutional taking of a private property. So if maybe you were looking at a 10 unit development and there was a conflict with a buffer, and you made your takings claim, you're not guaranteed that you're going get the 10 unit development. You might get something, but not necessarily what you asked for.

And then let's see. I don't know if I want to flag. I think the way that when we read through this, there's going to be just more restrictions and more changes eventually to zoning to clarify how you would apply all of the changes in the buffer standards that are included here at this kind of starting point with the Coastal Commission staff. And so that's the ESHA buffer. And then the uses that are in the ESHA and the buffer were also different.

You can have a standard for a buffer, but what actually can you put in there anyway? And we have resource dependent uses, and that's like public access ways and trails. And

you

can have public road crossings. You can have utility lines, restoration, of course, and enhancement projects. And we have lots of those. And then nature education and biological research. And then public works projects that are identified in not just any public work projects, but it has to be in the capital improvement plan.

And then the coastal commission's proposed allowed uses are, in some ways, similar because public access ways and trails and then repair or protection of existing public roads, but not in wetlands. And so access roads to a lawfully permitted use outside of INSHA, also not allowed in wetlands for utility lines. So you can see that there's some more restrictions and not express clarity for some of the softer uses that we allow, like resource restoration enhancement. But I think that is covered elsewhere. So that, we wanted to flag that.

I think there could be some limitations on the city's ability to implement capital projects with these changes. And then, yeah, I think that's I think that's it for now. For the mitigation ratios

oh

yeah oh sorry the the uses and the buffers I was skipping around some of it's because I can't see that far For the existing allowed uses, you can see them on the screen. But the coastal commissions were very different and on the softer side of flood control and clean water and erosion control and bioswales and repair and protection of, again, I flagged existing roads. So I kind of just summarized what was on the screen and continued use and maintenance of existing roads. So I kind of just packaged it up and set it in a different way. But you get the gist from this table.

Did you want to add anything to that?

I think both within the ESHA itself on slide 23 and in the buffers, one of the big changes is the public works projects. And, with, you know, within those buffers, just removing of, generally speaking, public works projects within this capital improvement plan, which is the CIP, that that kind of broad category is proposed for removal. So we'll just want that you know, that's kind of the I think probably, practically speaking, certainly for the city is, like, the biggest a big change. I think the the coastal act is really pretty clear, particularly within ESHA. If you go back to the environmentally sensitive habitat shall be protected against significant disruption, and only uses dependent on those resources shall be allowed within those areas.

So within the ESHA itself, it's really limited in the coastal act itself to those resource dependent uses. Within areas adjacent to the ESHA, potentially could be read as ESHA buffers, it's a little broader, a little more abstract. But I wanted to flag that in both instances under our existing policies, bulk work projects are listed. And those are both, based on the coastal commission status recommendations, removed as allowances. So I wanted to kind of flag that particular difference.

And we do have a table on the mitigation ratios, that like for disturbances to ESHA or ESHA buffer. And that is the next topic. So we while the city requires new development to avoid impacts to ESHA and I say avoid because you're just going to learn that there are circumstances where it's Okay when the impacts are unavoidable, the city requires them to be fully mitigated. And so that's we don't say one to one ratio, but in a way, it's fully mitigated. It would be do a biological study.

And then I identify what that looks like as far as replacing the function of what was just impacted. And typically, that's if you impact something like 0.2 acres, then you have to replace it at least with 0.2 acres with lots of other things thrown in. And we have five year monitoring, and then there's other specifics about what that means when you're monitoring and under circumstances where if the mitigation fails, what you do. But the Coastal Commission staff proposed something different and more explicit ratios for impacts. And that is in CE 1.7, and there's no adjustments allowed.

So you can see on the screen, for Creek and Riparian, impacts must be fully mitigated. So if you put in like replace a utility line, and you have to when you get in to the ESHA, let's say

a

culvert under a creek, and you have to get into that creek to get to that culvert, then you have to mitigate it at whatever ratio is determined through that biological study. And then what the Coastal Commission had was that impact just four to one. That would have to be replaced. And then wetlands, same. We have three to one is a ratio.

And there's four to one for permanent. And then for temporary impacts, it would be one to one. And again, there's very limited circumstances where you're going to see an allowed impact to a wetland in the coastal zone, or really anywhere in the city. We're pretty exclusive when it comes to development in a wetland. And then monarch butterflies again, the same thing three to one ratio.

And native grasslands, three to one. And you can see it just go down the list for our ESHA types. It's three to one from must be mitigated, it's tailored to that resource. And then the coastal commission it's not on the screen, but in the tables that you have attached to the staff report and then also in the staff report itself, there's provisions that if mitigation site's not successful in the first five years this is coming from the Coastal Commission staff's revisions that the site be monitored for longer than five years. And then a new site may be required to be utilized well, I think it is required to be utilized for mitigation oh, no, if need be.

And that could really extend out the condition for the approval of whatever that coastal development permit was permitting. And it could be burdensome. And I'm not saying that that is right or wrong. I'm just flagging that it's different because we have some time assurance built into our monitoring for mitigation sites for various reasons that aren't necessarily relevant at this time. The next slide, have and Andy, you can add in.

There's so many changes here that I was trying to highlight some of the big stuff, but add in. And same with you guys over there. For the ESHA tree protections, we have our current policies. They protect and this part's important native woodlands. And we require impact mitigation to mature native trees.

And where the impacts are unavoidable, the mitigation can include planting of replacement trees on-site that's required. And then what the Coastal Commission let me make sure I didn't miss any of my notes here. And then the way yeah, this is important. The way that the mitigation to an impact to the trees are in our general plan right now. We have not been specific about that because through an implementation program, we are to prepare a tree protection ordinance.

And it has a lot of specifics in it, but I think it also misses a lot of things that we would need in a tree protection ordinance for these native woodlands and native trees. And we haven't prepared that yet. It's in our work program that city council reviews every year and prioritizes. It's higher on the list. I don't know exactly what number it is, but we just haven't got to it yet because of the other priorities.

And so what, in essence, what the Coastal Commission staff want is a new policy that gets it more into the weeds, and it would broaden the tree protection for trees that serve as roosting or nesting, not just for raptors and all other trees. And there's a little bit of to me, a little bit of vagueness as to what you do with the non native trees, because that was referenced in their underlying strike through. And we'll continue to talk about that. And then they raised the standard for the removal of the protected trees, and that's the second bullet on the screen. And removal would only be allowed where there's no feasible alternative.

And so that just would make it a lot harder to remove a tree. And you'd have a harder argument to make with some evidence to show that there's no feasible alternative. And then the replacement ratio is very, very explicit. And that's 10 replacement trees for every one tree removed. So that's also a pretty or could be.

I mean, that's also not for me to say if that is a lot or a little. But they're proposing 10 to one. Yeah. So I think that the way that they're defining trees is probably a little bit more expansive than ours, which is why we flag that in the second bullet. And I'm not sure if I really need to say anything about the sub bullets in this view.

Yeah. So let's talk about permeable fencing. This is kind of small but new, so we thought to flag it for you. We don't mandate any kind of fencing be permeable at this time. And the staff want all new fencing that's adjacent to ESHA to be permeable.

And that's for wildlife movement so that they can it doesn't so that a fence doesn't create a barrier to wildlife passage. And on the flip side of that, you might get domestic pets access into ESHA. And I can think of one project where that was an issue, And they had a design to reduce the ability for cats, for example, to get into the ASHA. So the bottom of the fence was not permeable. By having these kind of rigid rules, there's always something that gives, right?

Like, our rules now have issues. These rules may have issues, and we just wanted to flag them for you. And then for the biological study, we have a requirement for a biological study applications that are within 300 feet of an ESHA or that could potentially adversely impact an ESHA. And the Coastal Commission staff are suggesting that reducing the distance for the trigger for a biological study to 100 feet oh, sorry, 200 feet and adding some additional requirements for what's in a study. So we were pretty specific in the general plan and zoning on what's in these biological studies because they are so important to the city.

The Coastal Commission staff also has a new application requirement regarding monarchs to do a protocol survey during the aggregation and roosting season within the last year for developments adjacent to Monarch Esches or the buffers. And so this is more than just Santa Barbara Shore certainly is that area, Elwood area, because Elwood Mesa has so much monarch butterfly habitat and aggregation sites. And the way they have expressed their revisions, it really limits the window. So there could be long delays when you're submitting your biological study. So it's really kind of a timing issue, because it would mandate that the results of a current butterfly protocol survey during the aggregation and roosting window be included in that report.

And so if it's not in the season, you have to wait for it. You get what I'm saying, right? They don't aggregate all year round.

Something that's not mentioned in this department, when we talk about the wildlife, the permeable fencing and really the concept there is about connectivity and not providing barriers to wildlife movement. I also did want to flag kind of a not competing, but another project that's on the kind of a future item on the work program is there is legislation within the last couple of years, I don't remember the bill name, where we need to do a general plan update to address wildlife connectivity. So there is that kind of near future analysis that we'll be considering in policy, which presumably would include the inland and coastal areas, and how we think about wildlife connectivity within our community. And harkening back to the creek and watershed management plan project, one of the cool things we got to do is set up those motion censored cameras along the creek corridors. And certainly, our

creek

corridors, there's there's some evidence that pretty even pretty large mammals are using our creek corridors as that kind of a a highway of sorts for movement. So I just wanted to flag that, like, when we're thinking about wildlife within our community, that is something that will be a specific focus in the not too distant future as a mandated general plan update. So just kind of wanted to give a little context to where we're going to be really thinking about that topic, not right now, but pretty soon. That's something we're going to have to tackle in the next few years.

And we do have wildlife movement policy. We just don't have zoning that implements this in this way. But like Andy said, we're headed that way. So we have questions for you on the screen. We went through some of the changes and thought, well, if we could get some feedback on creating a uniform 100 foot Esha buffer and what your thoughts were on that, and as compared to how we have it tailored a little bit more to the resource now.

And if you have concerns regarding limits on the allowed uses in Esha and also in Esha buffers. And then question seven, do you support expanding tree protections and mandating the specific ratios and the permeable fencing, you know, when the fencing is adjacent to ESHA, and then concerns about changing the biological study requirements. And then if there's any feedback that you specifically wanna give us, We'll we'll share with this this feedback anyway with the Coastal Commission. But if there's something that you really wanna emphasize one way or the other, like support for or changes to, this is this is one of the touch points that we'll have on ESHF. We'll have more than this one.

Commissioners have any questions on this? Commissioner Penman?

Do we have map of the resources within the city or coastal zones of the Eshes?

We do have a map in the general plan, figure four CE4-one, I think.

Okay. Was it in the packet? I'm not sure.

No. It's in the general plan. And Andy can pull it up now. We also, I forgot, we had a little map showing the, like an ESHA, and you can see what a buffer might be right now that we have in our general plan versus what that static buffer might look like on a vacant site. So we can pull up both, but we'll show you the general plans online, and there's binders all over the place, and maybe not all updated.

But figure four dash one hasn't been replaced for a while. And this is just a starting point for for ESHA despite site specific studies are important, but it and it helps kinda guide you in because we did have a lot of biological studies when the city formed. So we were able to get shape files and map a lot of those that are shown on the screen.

And I'll and so I'll mention, I can we can zoom in and out a little bit. This is a PDF version. It's, I believe the X-ray layer is also available publicly on our magnet portal map. So there is a way you can kind of zoom in and out with, like, an aerial underneath as well to get a little more local context. We're on the plan on the SaaS side, we're very familiar looking at maps at the parcel boundary.

So the gray is the different parcels. And and so this is figure four dash one of the general plan. It's also mapped in figure three dash five in the open space element, so it's in the conservation element and the open space element. And as Anne was kind of hitting at it, you're ESHA if you're ESHA, right? If you meet the definition of ESHA, you're ESHA, whether it's mapped or not.

So this is not a definitive map. This you know, we would look at that individual biological study where the boundary is, and apply those use limitations and the buffers based on the current data the current analysis, although degraded ESHA that was illegally degraded does not lose its status. So there's always nuance. But this gives kind of a broad picture of the different categories and so, you know, again, is a little tricky because we're going to zoom in and out, so you're going to of lose the legend as we go. But you can see different types of eschia types by color.

So, like, out in Elwood you see a lot of that darker orange which will be your monarch habitat. You also see creek and riparian habitat. We have lots of creeks in the city, so lots of riparian habitat associated with those creeks. That lighter, kind of yell orangey yellow tan color, I guess, will be your sage scrub, dune bluff scrub. So those are pretty common out in Elwood as some of your major escher types.

As you go elsewhere in the city, you're going get a lot of, riparian habitat. You see quite a bit of different types of habitat at Lake Los Carneros. And then also more riparian habitat in particular with some, butterfly roosting habitat on the Eastern Side Of Galita. So that, again, very broadly speaking. But we always look at those site specific analyses for those refined boundaries with a project.

That trigger for that biological study is kind of, right now, if you're not within 300, you don't necessarily have to do a biological study. But if you're within 300, that's the trigger where we get the site specific information with a project.

That's helpful. Thank you. Yeah, it would be interesting to see kind of like how things change with the new proposed setbacks or buffers, how it looks now and how it would look, what properties would be affected with the changes might be helpful to visualize.

I will note, like on the monarch habitat, currently the stage is 100, but there's ways to reduce down to 50 based on kind of what type of monarch habitat it is. And so that's one you can see a lot of in Elwood in particular. Now the Creek and Riparian, it's 100 feet now. It's proposed for 100 feet, so not really a change. A little bit of change in flexibility in the language, but fundamentally the 100 feet to 100 feet.

And wetlands in the coastal zone is 100 feet to 100 feet. So Monarch potentially could be 50 feet, but now it's a hard and fast 100 for all of this. So we did and this is very crude, so apologies for that, but just trying to give a very little sense of what that might look like. And we flag these just because they're also housing sites, within the coastal zone. So this is kind of the northern edge of Monarch Habitat on Elwood and these are some vacant sites zoned for residential.

The orange line represents what 50 would look like with the reduction that's currently allowed based on specific analysis. And then the 100 feet is kind of the hard and fast and you can see how that would kind of go into those sites. Obviously, it's twice as big a buffer, right? Pretty simple math there. But you can see kind of kind of on a pretty standard lot in our city kind of what that might mean if you're right adjacent to the ESHA.

And doing a note, you know, you if anyone's curious, like having an intervening road doesn't matter, right? Or even intervening development doesn't matter either way, currently or as proposed. So it's not like, oh, just because there's a road in between you and the ESHA, you don't apply the buffer. You still apply it. It counts as part of the buffer, but, like, you would still encroach into that next parcel. And so this is, again, very crude, just trying to give a little sense like what could happen. And again, the 50 foot is not a guarantee, but there's a potential reduction there. And now we'd be looking reduction.

In a map like this, would that be a taking? Because if this is, set for housing, that doesn't look like that leaves you any room to build.

I think planning staff would look straight to the city attorney Okay. For questions like

mean, I think any individual parcel will have to be analyzed on a case by case basis when there is development. So it's very hard to draw any bright line rules in this context. So it's always going to depend on the site and what's proposed.

And factually speaking, when you start getting your development footprint and when it shrinks, then you still have the same height standards and you still have the same setbacks and all the same other, like, open space requirements and whatever it is. And so, like, for this site, you could see it would be a very narrow strip of land, assuming that this I think it is the ESHA is mapped pretty close to how a scientist would come out and do their biological study, because it's relatively recent, that mapping. So you can come to your own have your own thoughts on that. But again, we don't have a development application in on the site yet. And we'll

have

to cross that bridge when we get there, assuming that we land on that 100 foot buffer.

And I'll just also add that we do also have variance procedures, which like, we have, currently in our zoning regulations and, you know, it would be to be determined what that might look like in the IP. But currently, there's, variance procedures for very, like, unique lots. We really don't see variances. It's a pretty high bar to get a variance approved. That's possibly an avenue where you would still apply the standard, but we you know, depending on how constrained the site is, a variance might still not get you what you need. But I just wanted to flag that potentially there's a variance procedure that could come into play.

I would just like to make the comment that I think that the ratio for 10 to one for having to move a tree for one reason or another, to put 10 trees in place of that, I think that's a little overreaching. That just seems like a little much to me. And I don't even know. Does that mean the trees all have to be in one spot? Or can you scatter them around the city? Or what does that even mean? That just seems a little bit overreaching to me.

You actually raised one question that I had. Would the 10 trees have to be planted on-site or could they also be off-site?

We can pull up the language, but likely we need to clarify that at a later point. Okay. You know, certainly off-site there's practical limitations because who's to say the property owner? If it's not the same property, like, if it's the city, do we have another city property? It's a private property owner, how would that work with a different private property owner? Or would the city want to have those trees planted on city property? So those kind of details would have to get ironed out.

And then for the expansion of trees that count under the protected trees, there was the broader language that if there's if a tree is used for any type of roosting, it's then a protected tree. Is that during the roosting season? Or that's if it's used for a roosting at any point during the year by any bird not raptor, then it would be considered a protected tree? Is that right?

Give us a second.

Yes. It's it's a very specific question. So

Yeah. Commissioner, we we might need to spend more time with language, but I'll give you the added sentence. It's would be proposed in c 9.1. Protected trees are defined for the purposes of policy c nine through c 9.5 as mature native or roosting nesting trees that do not pose a threat to health to health and safety. So I'd say just, like, based on that, it's not totally clear. I mean, I would think I'm not sure we would limit it to the season, so it's just like you could you just have to wait until the end of the season and then cut it down. I'm not sure that would make sense. But we'd have to look, maybe clarify with Coastal Commission staff as to the intent there.

Yeah, it seems that would cover all trees, right? Because almost any tree could have a bird nest at some point during the year. So I'm not sure what trees would not count by that.

Yeah, we'll have I mean, if there's an active nest, of course.

Certainly. But this seems to go beyond that, I guess.

Well, yeah, and we would have to flush that out in the zoning. Okay. Make sure it's clear that it's native birds and non native birds and things like that.

I'm going to save my comments until after the public comment because I know there's a lot of folks here to speak tonight on this issue, and I'd love to hear from them before I give comment.

So do we want to go ahead and see if any of the speakers want to speak on this matter?

Good evening, planning commissioners. My name is Christina Maguire. I'm actually a city employee. I work in current planning. I have not been involved with this project.

And I'm speaking on behalf of myself tonight, on behalf of the city. I actually have a lot of questions. But I did want to say that I think staff did a really great job in their PowerPoint presentation. And I would encourage staff, as an individual, to take forward those things that you highlighted in the PowerPoint back to the Coastal Commission for them to reconsider. In addition to that, in addition to all of those things that city staff and consultants have pointed out already, I had a couple of other comments that I wanted to add.

So I live and own property in the coastal zone. I own a house and an ADU. And we live close to ESHA. But according to the documents that I read, I don't know if we're adjacent to ESHA, mostly because of the definition of adjacent isn't so clear in some of the documentation. And also, with respect to the permeable fences, I would seek more clarification on that.

For example, is that just a property line immediately contiguous and adjacent to the ESHA? Or is it all four of the property lines or 12 property lines, however many property lines there happen to be? And whether or not anyway, so I could kind of go on and on about the definitions for that. But I also had some more questions about the permeable fencing specifically. And it seems problematic for several reasons for safety of humans, for safety of pets, for safety of more humans and pets around swimming pools and water features in people's backyards.

And then I did want to point out that we have, in our completely fenced in backyard, have seen five different species of mammals. This is in our completely fenced in backyard. So I'm not sure how much more helpful a fence would be that is open to your neighbors. In addition to that, a lot of these fences don't require permits. So I don't know what the implementation plan is for that since fences at eight feet in height are exempt anyway.

So I'm not sure how those requirements would be implemented. Let's see. I'm also not sure about the reduction from 300 to 200 feet for biological resources report are. That seems a little bit arbitrary. 300 feet was studied over the city's EIR and was a good number to come about for that report requirement.

So if it's good enough for the rest of the city, it should be good enough for the coastal zone properties. Proposed policy c 1.6 b is too that's regarding a reasonable economic use of the property. That policy seems to me to be too vague, and the threshold is ambiguous. And then I'd also wanted to throw out, before my time is up I don't know if I've reached my time that I used to also work at the city of Santa Barbara. And in the city of Santa Barbara, they have an adopted LCP.

However, they have not been able to amend the section of the coastal zone since 2017 because the process for amending the coastal part of it is pretty onerous at the Coastal Commission. So they effectively have two zoning ordinances within the city. So I would just be careful about things like that. That's it. Thank you.

I want to start by saying thank you to the Planning Commission, city staff, consultants, the California Coastal Commission. This is really nice that you're doing this. In terms of oh, there's a timer. In terms of my comments, I would start by asking for a really good comparison of Galita's proposed LCP to the LCPs of approximately three other cities that are comparable to Goleta. That would really help at least me to try to understand what this LCP how this LCP might be.

A second thing I'd like to say is, yeah, when providing documents, it would be really nice to have table four dash one and table four dash two, which are referenced multiple times. Going through these amendments, for CE 1.2, I would like you to retain the word designated because otherwise, for example, if in my landscape again, in the Elwood area Plant a chaparral plant in my front yard. Then already is my front all of a sudden escha? CE 1.2. M, from a local, regional, or statewide perspective, please delete that or clarify it because it does not sound well defined.

For CE 1.3 a and b, you know, it says the vegetation map shall identify all trees within a 500 foot vicinity of the proposed development. All trees within 500 feet? That sounds infeasible. Another thing is the potential for sensitive species or habitat. That sounds hard to figure out.

As my wife mentioned, in CE 1.3, it's also question 1.8. Clarifying, just a really good clarification of adjacent would be nice. The word adjacent is used lots of places, but what does that really mean again? In terms of uses, so the California Coastal Commission proposes retaining public access ways and trails. I would really like to still see nature education and biological research allowed for Massachusetts.

Was my timer. Because if nothing else, I think the biological studies are needed for the other things. Thanks.

Good evening, chair and commissioners. My name is Tara Ann Hefoe. I'm a senior attorney with the Environmental Defense Center. And I'm joined by my colleague, Brian Troutwein, this evening. On behalf of our clients, Santa Barbara Urban Creeks Council and EDC, we want to first thank staff very much, staff for both the city and coastal commission, for preparing this suite of coastal resource protection policies. A lot of time and effort clearly went into these draft policies. And for that, we're really appreciative. I have three comments this evening. First and I might have missed it, but just curious about the implementation plan, the process for drafting, and just an update on that. Obviously, with the land use plan, that will make up the local coastal program.

So just wondering when work on the implementation plan will begin, if not already, and if there's anything to share about that process at this time. Second, we support the application of certain ESHA policies to both coastal and inland areas. Applying these policies uniformly throughout the city will ensure consistency, clarity, and protection for all of Goleta's incredible natural resources. Creeks, wetlands, and other ESHA do not necessarily adhere to the boundaries that we draw between inland and coastal areas. So it's imperative to craft policies that protect these areas uniformly and equally.

I know this was mentioned a little bit, I think, by you, Ms. Wells, earlier about the two policies. And I might just need some clarification on what you meant by the GP and CP policies from your statement earlier. And then finally, we recommend clarifying the definition of wetland and policies CE three point one and three point two. These policies make clear that the city uses the identification of a single indicator from soil hydrology or plants to determine the boundary of a wetland, but also references other agencies' definitions and states the most protective definition should apply.

CE 3.2 also includes a definition of a wetland. So we look forward to discussing the best approach with the city staff to ensure these policies can be easily understood and applied. We look forward to continuing to engage in this process and really appreciate the opportunity to comment tonight and learn more. Thank you.

Good evening, vice chair, Miller, and commissioners. I'm Brian Troutwein, senior analyst and watershed program director with the Environmental Defense Center. And here in Goleta, we have so many important natural resources which truly define our community and which should be preserved. The LCP is so important because it sets forth the rules for future land use land uses in the coastal zone to protect these special resources like streams and wetlands and environmentally sensitive habitats. It's important that the LCP has a broad definition of ESHA consistent with the coastal act.

The LCP should specify that white tailed kite foraging habitat, and it's one of our rarest birds in Goleta, is ESHA. The Gaviota Coast Plant is a nearby LCP that does that. The LCP should have protections for unmapped ESHA as proposed in policy CE 1.3. And when ESHAs are illegally destroyed or damaged, they must still be protected as ESHA as proposed under policy 1.4. We support limiting uses in ESHA and ESHA buffers and specifically support removing public works CIP projects from allowed uses in ESHA's and ESHA buffers.

New roads or expanding the use of existing roads should not be allowed in ESHA and ESHA buffers under policy CE one point six and one point six a. Uses allowed in ESHA should buffers should be limited to uses that are compatible with ESHA, and uses in ESHA should be limited to those that are dependent on ESHA. We support a minimum 100 foot buffer for all ESHAs. The the 10 foot native grassland ESHAs and the existing 25 foot coastal sage ESHAs buffer, they're too small really to protect those ESHAs. The Gaviota Coast plant is an adjacent LCP that has a 100 foot setback for all ESHAs, and it's worked well.

When development and uses are allowed in ESHAs, only the minimum development must be allowed. And mitigation must be a minimum of four to one for wetlands and streams and three to one for ESHAs. Sometimes even higher ratios are necessary. We support the biological study requirements. When considering whether to require a biological study, we support the 300 foot distance because new development can impact ESHA over 200 feet away due to stormwater runoff, erosion and sedimentation, or invasive non native plants that can impact ESHA's over 200 feet away.

The stream protection policy should keep creeks natural and should restore degraded creeks. For example, policy c e 2.3 should ensure that sediment transport down our creeks is done through the natural process of the stream flow moving the sediment out to our beaches while minimizing the need for trucks and bulldozers disposing of sediment on Goleta Beach. And we support the tree protections and, in fact, recommend adding the city's two other native trees to policy c e 9.1. The California bay laurel and white alder trees are important escher trees that should be mentioned in policy CE 9.1. We look forward to working with you and your staff through this process, and thank you very much for your time tonight.

Hi. Michael Johnson. I, will speak further when when we get to the oil and gas, but I had a question, and I know I'm hoping that one of the commissioners will ask this. If there is I mean, there's a there's an appeals process if something gets approved. But is there also, as part of this, if there's a corner case element so that that that can can the existing policy be followed?

Like, get sorry. I'm, get it approved in concept and then submit it to the coastal commission Is that still an available option if on the rare case where there's there's there's, like, what was shown on the where the 100 foot goes in and almost takes the property, can you still get it an approval and concept and then go to commission? That was a question that that that that came up. Thank you.

Thank you. And, madam chair, I am seeing one hand raised on Zoom. Jay Ryderbeck, if you could remember to unmute yourself, please, and you'll have three minutes. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Miller and commissioners. In general, some of the some of these questions and concerns that we're having about these buffers being in policy, I kind of alluded to earlier, where in general, a general plan would say that the goal is to protect these areas. And then in the implementation plan, it would talk about the buffer and what it is for each of these areas. Because that's the general plan is the rule and the implementation plan or zoning is the tool to implement those rules. And one of those tools is a variance in the zoning code where I really don't think legally you can vary a policy unless it's a takings.

So you're really forcing people to sue the city to on a takings, and I'll let the city attorney speak to that. And that may be the reference of in CE 1.6 b footnote on page nine, which is applicable to Creek and Riparian, where the city is still seeing if the language is sufficient and adequate. I'm curious what has been identified as the concern to kind of put a footnote in reference to that. I'm really happy to see the EDC there. They worked with the city quite a bit, a lot a lot of effort from staff and EDC staff, on SPAs, stream protection areas.

And I see that coastal staff is recommending that that be eliminated and just lumped in with ESHA in general. In the implementation plan, section subsection seven seventeen thirty seventy gives a lot of detail to SPAs, including the opportunity for reduction. So that's really appropriate there. And that that that's kind of kind of the the best way to approach, you know, protection, but allowing some flexibility. I was also kind of curious if there's a if we know how many properties reducing from 300 to 200 using GIS and doing a buffer on all the creeks and the Esha, how many parcels are impacted by that reduction?

Or just in general, how many parcels these Esha policies are actually implementing or impacting? Because I think a vast majority of citizens of Galita have no idea that they're adjacent to or within a buffer. And if they want to do a shed or a patio that it would be triggering, you know, thousand dollars in screening and bio study and up to a year of a CDP process. So just kind of some clarifications. And, again, thank you for your time.

Thank you. And Madam Chair, I have no further public speakers.

Okay. Should we go to the next topic? Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah, I have some responses to the questions. I was kind of holding my comments until after public comment, because I wanted to see what the public

set first. Go ahead. Commissioner Schuster.

Okay. Let me go back to the questions slide real quick. So you asked five questions here, and so I wanted or six questions here, and so I wanted to go through some of those just to give some feedback. Do you support creating a uniform 100 foot ESHA buffer? And I would support that.

And I'm glad that we're putting some stronger enforcement around it and less exceptions because I feel that we've had quite a lot of requests for exceptions on the 100 foot buffer. And I like that we're considering strengthening that here. So I support the Coastal Commission's recommendation there. Are there concerns regarding further limits on allowable uses in ESHA and ESHA buffers? One of the public commenters talked about environmental education and research, and I do think that should be allowed within ESHA.

And also, habitat restoration. We want our ESHAs to be thriving, and sometimes that requires an extra hand from some restoration experts to assist with that. So I would want to see that in there. I'm less concerned about the public works projects not being allowed as a large group. I did note that in the buffers for ESHAs there's some exceptions for flood control and things like that which would cover some of our public works projects.

I've always been a little uncomfortable that we exempted all of our projects but then require non city projects to have restrictions. It feels like a double standard where we're making one category if it's a city project and one category if it's not a city project. I'd rather see if we need an exception for a public works project, what is the type and nature of that project that should be impacted whether it's a city or a non city project. So I'm glad that flood control is one of the exceptions because I think that is something we really need that access for. Do you support expanded tree protections and mandating specific mitigation ratios?

I like the higher ratios that we have here. I am a little concerned that I think the language might create a limitation in being able to remove any tree. And in some cases, I think being able to lean into those mitigation ratios and do a 10 to one replanting but still be able to remove the tree if you need to outside of nesting times, I think there should potentially be some allowance there for non native trees. Did support I Brian had brought up the California Bay Laurel and the White Adler as additional native trees. And I thought that was a good recommendation to consider adding those additional native trees into it.

So I wanted to put that in there as well. The supporting of the permeable fencing, I think that that does make sense. But I do yeah, I think that one I would support in terms of the permeable fencing. I think the clarification there was one of the public commenters that made some good notes about, does that mean that you can't have permeable fencing anywhere on your property or just the parts of the property that are adjacent to the ESHA? I thought that was an interesting question that we should try and clarify, especially for maybe a larger property.

And then that implementation question is really interesting. If you don't need a permit for a fence under eight feet, do we then need to switch it in the local coastal program that you do need a permit for any fencing in order to be able to restrict what type of fencing they're putting in? That's an interesting do you want to comment on that?

Yeah. I wanted to maybe just chime in on the question of this adjacency term. And then also, can address the question about implementation. So one of the tricky things is sometime we talk about Esha buffers a lot. And certainly, the buffers would be adjacent to the ESHA. Right? So I think when you're talking about like a lot of uses in ESHA buffers, that's kind of an adjacency to ESHA concept. But then in other places Mhmm. Instead of talking about permeable fencing and ESHA buffers, it's the language says adjacent. And it's like do those two things, do they mean the same thing?

Right? And some of that I think we can seek clarification with Coastal Commission staff on but kind of the root kind of reason I think we're seeing that is when you look at Coastal Act section 30,240, particularly subsection b, development in areas adjacent to ESHA shall be cited and designed to prevent impacts. So, like, the Coastal Act doesn't use the term buffer. The Coastal Act uses this term adjacent. And so you're kind of seeing that translated in kind of these two different ways where there's adjacency in some of the policy and buffer in some of the policy.

So it's certainly something we can flag for clarification. And then in terms of how we would enforce something like permeable fencing, one could be clarifying. But then we could also right now, fences under eight feet don't need a permit. Well, if you're within an Ashton buffer, maybe you do need a permit. That's one way, through the permitting step or through code compliance. If something was done illegally without might not need a permit, it's just not allowed. That certainly could be a code compliance question as well.

Thank you. And then I think, do I have concerns about the changes to the biological study requirements? I would say no. I support the recommendations there. To go back to a few other things, can you clarify again one of the public commenters asked about exceptions for coroner cases. And I do think with this, the variance allowances wouldn't be allowed. And also, they'd have to make a takings case in order to be able to have exceptions to the policies in this. But can you clarify that for that public commenter?

Kishore, I think we'd have to look at the language about variances in a little more detail. And it's also we don't know what the variance language will look like after a thorough review by the school supervision staff. So it's a little bit tough to say. In terms of doing a concept review, once we're certified, I think that conceptual local review, except perhaps where there's retained jurisdiction, that small area where there's retained jurisdiction, I don't think that process will continue. So I don't think where we have the actual permit authority, think we will apply our policies and regulations to the application. Whether that limits what you can do or not, I think that would be the process.

Thank you. I appreciate that clarification. There was also a note of the white tailed kite habitats. And I thought that was interesting, especially as other local coastal programs have been able to add the white tailed kite habitat as a protected area. So I'd like to learn more about the potential for that.

That is I think my comments on that and I encourage other planning commissioners I'm curious what other planning commissioners responses to these questions are as well

Yeah, as far as my responses, the 100 foot buffer uniform 100 foot buffer. I think Mr. Ritterback said it much more eloquently than I did, but yeah, how many properties are affected? I do think you know a lot of property owners might not be aware it would be great to notify them if they're going to be negatively affected and as far as the process goes with the even where the local or the coastal zone line was written in the coastal act, there are amendments for that. Would this be, some would there be amendments possible for these types of, you know,

encroachments so commissioner Penniman the the coastal act boundary is enshrined in the coastal act

I meant just for the buffers would there be sorry for the buffers that are encroaching on somebody's property would there be process for making modifications to that or appealing that?

Commissioner Pendon, no. Okay. It'd be I mean, one of the changes that they like, some of our buffers are smaller, but there's also sometimes some flexibility depending on which type of habitat type to like, monarch is 100 but could be reduced to 50. The SPA is 100, could be reduced as far down as to 25. So depending on the resource type, there's potential reductions. The way they proposed it, it's hard and fast and if you want to get a reduction, you're going to have to make a takings argument. Got you. Got you.

Yeah. So that does seem like it's going to set us up for some lawsuits. There are as far as the buffer limits, I think the permeable fencing makes a lot of sense, like animal corridors. The creeks are a great example of that. I'm all for it. I think we should do that. I don't think it makes sense having permeable fences into people's backyards. I think, especially with the mountain lines going up and down the creeks, I would not want that for my animals and pets. I put up a fence to keep them safe. So, I don't know if that makes if that's going to be a requirement, like to have permeable fencing into people's backyards.

Is that, a possibility?

Mr. Pearman, that's why we understand it that you know, it it comes to the term adjacent, but, like, what we put on the slide, I'll put it back up, is some of the properties on Elwood adjacent to Monarch Habitat. And so I think it's however adjacency is defined, we think these I'm wait for it to load. But you have these these dwellings. So this is Hollister up here.

I'm blanking on what road this is, but this is kind of the where like, close to where the public parking lot on Ewitt is, so you have a monarch habitat here. So it's I would say these property lines are certainly adjacent to the Asha, and so you couldn't have a solid fence in these backyard.

That doesn't make sense to me. You know, having it open, you know, on the open end of the Esha to create a corridor makes a lot of sense, but in the backyard it does. What else? Think the SPA removal that was mentioned was also kind of stood out to me as something that we've always kind of prided ourselves on and you know protecting our creeks and clean waters is important. Can you explain a little bit about the justification for moving removing that?

So Commissioner Pembina, it's not a removal. Locoso Medical Commissioner staff recommended and we have policy CE two through CE nine where we have kind of different requirements for different types of ASHA, right, where we are we kind of split out those different of different categories of ESHA and, like, have different buffers for each one. The SPA is kind of the nomenclature is a bit different, but essentially, the SPA you're talking about your riparian habitat plus a buffer, so that SPA, that Stream Site Protection Area, kind of serves as essentially a buffer, and so what their recommendation they're doing is to make it all uniform including your riparian buffer all into one standard at a 100 feet. So it's not getting rid of it. It's removing certainly the term SPA that's going away, but the 100 foot standard is just getting moved to a different location within the conservation element.

It seemed like it was being absorbed with the canopy of the riparian area. And that would cover the area that the SPA is covering? Is that

I think we'd have to look. I'm not sure it really changed. Like right now, we start that 100 feet the farthest out, either top of bank or edge of riparian habitat, and then you go to 100 feet. We'd have to look. I'm not sure that chain looked like it

was just being absorbed because it was redundant, but

Yeah. It was made clear on that. Commissioner Pena, it was made redundant by the changes to CE2 where we say they're proposing if you're ASHA, it's 100 feet from the edge of ASHA.

I see.

And so these resource specific, these subcategories of Esha, so wetlands is a subcategory, monarch habitat is a subcategory, riparian is a subcategory, they essentially propose getting rid of the subcategories and lumping it all into one uniform standard at a 100 feet. And so that's kind of what we're flagging is that the current policies have these kind of nuance and different rules depending on the resource type, and they're proposing getting rid of the nuance and just having this one standard.

Okay. Thank you for the clarification. That's it.

I wanted to just add I looked. I'm like, wait a second. We have white tailed kite already in the general plan. So I don't think there was any change for the kites, because we definitely protected the kitten nest, absolutely. And then for the trees, there's the list of the trees that was in the PowerPoint.

I wish I had added some clarity on that in the slide, in the preparation of the slide. Because the big change wasn't adding a tree, because our list in that CE 9.1, which we call the definition of protected trees, or the Coastal Commission staff proposing to change it to protect native trees. And that was a confusing title, too, because then it doesn't quite read that way. But the way they changed it because we listed out some trees. And then we said, or other native trees that are not otherwise protected, Inesha.

So we're capturing we're trying to capture everything. I can kind of see a weakness there maybe that they were trying to fix now. There's always something to learn. But then they really tweaked it so that the definition is about mature, native, or roosting nesting trees and defining them. And they listed out the species and then included our language that added anything else and really focusing on that raptor nesting and roosting in the definition.

So I just wanted to flag that when they added a species there's nothing wrong with adding a species. And I can kind of see where they were getting at. And it might be something we'll talk about with them with the CE 9.1. So this is a good discussion. I

just want to say I appreciate everyone's public comment, and I would encourage you to make your comments in writing as well so we could absorb all of it. Thank you.

One thing we meant to mention earlier Anne mentioned our email address, lcpcityofgalita dot gov. Anyone can reach out to us. It'll go to the whole project team with questions, thoughts, whatever they like. We also for those in person, if you want to write up more stuff, we do have a comment cards and a comment box, and we'll take those back with us as well. So we just wanted to flag that that is for those in attendance. We also have that. Perfect.

Mr. Newkirk and Ms. Wells, there were a couple of questions that were raised during public comment of a process nature, and I wonder if we want to address those briefly as well for the Commission and the public with regard to the implementation plan and our kind of timing and approach there. And then there was another question that I think is easily answered about whether we could retain a two step process with local review. And I think the answer to that one is no, that once we have a certified LCP, then there's a single process, which would be a local process, local CDP approval process that would be appealable to the Coastal Commission in some instances, but we would not retain a local in concept review, then the permit jurisdiction shifts to the city of Galita.

But on the implementation plan, maybe we can just address that briefly.

Sure. Right now, we're focusing on the policy, because the policy, as was stated by one of the commenters, drives the regulations. And if we start making changes to regulations that might be altered so we're focusing on policy first, just like we did when we prepared the general plan, then we prepared the zoning. We're doing the same thing. I mean, we have we do have the zoning regulations.

We're already kind of working with it to see how it could be adjusted to these changes that you see here. But we're to wait on releasing anything. Plus, it is a lot of material to read all at the same time. So we're, again, doing what we have typically done in the past, focusing on policy. And then we'll move on. Andy, did you want to add anything to that two step process?

Yeah, just confirming again Doctor. Yamhoff mentioned. What Like, yeah, we'll have our process once we're certified. Think the whole point of getting certified is not having the two step, the in concept locally. And yeah, it might, because of changed standards, it might not be beneficial to all potential projects. There may be projects that will be stifled by the changes, so it's not all necessarily all streamlined and better for potential applicant, but we'll be we'll apply the rules that we've adopted, And that'll be our process that a project will need to go through.

Did you have anything else you wanted to say? Director Imhofft?

Madam Vice Chair, no. I just wanted to flag those two items because I thought we might want to address them since they came up in public comment.

Okay. So where are we? Do we want

to go to the next topic now? Think staff's ready to move to the next topic, which is oil and gas.

Okay. And is this the last topic for this evening? It is. It is. Okay. We can because I know there's some public commenters that would like to comment on that. So we should get going on that.

All right. So as we've started all the topic areas, it's with the Coastal Act. And you can read it on the screen that new or expanded oil and gas development shall not be considered a coastal dependent industrial facility. And it may be permitted only if it's found to be consistent with all the applicable provisions of the Coastal Act and then certain additional requirements found in a different section than I just read off to you. So that's kind of the bar.

And then for this slide, we have so what the coastal commissioning staff is proposing are some changes, I think, specifically to LU 9.2 and LU 10 and SE 3.1 and policy SE eight because the oil and gas policies are spread in a number of elements of the general plan. And that updated information is because the circumstances have changed. And we are in the process of getting ready to decommission the Elwood Onshore facility. And we've abandoned lease four twenty one with the state. And then we've also abandoned some pipelines that served these facilities in the past.

So we have made some big progress, and the general plan still reads as if it has this robust oil and gas industrial facility in the coastal zone, which you read in the Coastal Act is not allowed. So with that updated information, they added some restrictions on oil and gas processing prohibitions and then additional detail on abandonment and restoration. And yeah, just adding some of that emphasis on oil and gas processing prohibitions, some more abandonment restoration requirements. And I think there's a couple of things that we might want to discuss with the commission staff about aligning some other related policy to make sure that references, for example, to abandonment restoration plan are tight. But that's just in the weeds.

But I wanted to just flag that for you. And I know that there'll be more discussion and public comment on that. If you want to hop to the next slide. We just have this general question about if there's anything that you want us to consider as we move forward with oil and gas and anything more specific. I I think the way our general plan is set up for oil and gas is directing us to comment on other agencies and what they do offshore and onshore.

And it's pretty clear. It's leaning on the side of, don't do it here. The resources are too sensitive. The coastline is too pristine. We saw that in the Refugio oil spill. So they're pretty tight on making it clear. We have clear direction in the general plan that these types of uses are not compatible with the Coastal Act and not what is desired here in the city of Toledo or even beyond.

So do commissioners have anything? Yeah. Commissioner Sirokin.

I'm just out of curiosity. I mean, there's been pronouncements coming on the national level that they're gonna open up drilling again. How does if that were to happen, if they are to mandate and, you know, sell leases, what then I mean, what are the options that the city has and that the locale has to deal with it? I mean, can they? Or is it almost a lost clause?

Well, it's a pretty big question that maybe goes beyond this. But our general plan, when it was written, it was written with that in mind to make sure that we position ourselves as best as possible to like, it's the policies enabling city hall to oppose offshore oil drilling, even off three miles in federal waters. So to that degree, I feel like I'll stop there because that's a whole other topic of what scenarios might if everything stayed three miles offshore, we can still write letters. We can still advocate. We can still do all that stuff.

But it's not in the state of California. It's definitely not in the city of Galita. If they were proposing something, then the city of Galita, that be very different. And that's why the policies are important in the general plan.

I just wondered if just even trying to do it is is gonna be productive or if it's just gonna you know, the government comes in and says, we're not doing that. So just if that's been considered, you know, in in you know, as as you've been discussing this and how to approach it, if that's been talked about and dealt with.

It has, but not through this project. But, Director Imhoff might

I don't have much to add. I think Ms. Wells' response is really right on point. I mean, we don't have authority when it comes to federal law or federal actions. So, we're limited locally, but there may be actions, local adopt, local resolutions that could be adopted or support for state legislation that has some effect. But, it really goes beyond the scope of our LCP here.

Commissioner Peterman.

Reading the changes, nothing really stood out to me. So I would like to hear, from the public comments, see if there's any other concerns that others have.

Go ahead. So, Mr. Norman, if you could

yeah. Hear a thing with Yes. Public If any members of the public here at, council chambers would like to speak, please step forward to the podium. And again, as a reminder to those on Zoom, if you wish to speak to, public comment, please, use the raise hand feature, and

I will call upon you.

Hello, commissioners. I'm Michael Johnson. I'm speaking on the behalf of Bell Canyon Recreation, who is the owner of the old Elwood onshore facility. Give you a little background about myself. Moved here in 1998, and I've raised my four kids here through they're all graduates of DP.

Got now six grandkids here locally and spent the summers at Haskell's Beach when you could drive down the old fire Road, and I was kinda sad to see that go. All that to say is I've got got a back or I'm a Galita at the at at the core. We purchased this site in 2023 and finalized it in 2024 through the bankruptcy court. When we were contemplating purchasing it, our primary goal was a glamping site. Seemed like it fit the demeanor of that site growing up.

In fact, it was funny. I didn't even realize that that oil facility was there for years because you when you drove down to Haskell's, you just didn't see it. Well hidden, but it's nice now that I'm really aware of it that it can be repurposed. Just wanted to give because we're we're anxiously trying to get along the process to cement our our use to you guys finally when when that when that becomes appropriate. Just to give you an update of where we're at, we're hydrocarbon free with the hard work of a lot of the people in this room.

City inspectors, host of agencies, APCD has deemed us hydrocarbon free. And we're I have an open GPA initiation. It's gonna help us clarify that use because it you know, a glamping site seems to fit into that weird boundary. And so my specific request onto this policy, I'm hopeful that it wouldn't be it'll be a mute point because we'll already have a development plan, there won't be a oil and gas facility in Galena any longer shortly. But if it if it gets delayed for some reason, I would hope that we could take the specific reference to open space, active recreation, and replace that with more of a what comes to the the conclusion of the of the planning commission and city council after a thoughtful deliberation process on what what that use would be.

I'll finish real quick. I had some other comments about specific language, but that's kind of I'll I'll I'll save that for the the written comment. And and my my my my encouragement to, allow us to keep that open is that, you know, economically, we we don't wanna be forced to, have state law have this as being an adaptive reuse project, which would would force, you know, higher impact, higher impact. I mean, that's not really what, as a Goleta resident, that I want. But that would be an an outcome if we if we can't proceed there.

Thank you guys so much, and we're looking forward to seeing you guys soon.

Thanks.

Madam Chair, do have one hand raised on Zoom. Jay Ritterbeck, you'll have three minutes. Please unmute yourself. Thank you.

Thank you again, vice chair, Miller, and commissioners. I would just like to, kinda brag on mister Johnson there and his his group that has gotten the high EOF hydrocarbon free. I think this might be the first public hearing or public opportunity for that to be known, where H2S is not, is no longer a major concern for nearby neighborhoods. And that kind of goes to policy SE 8.2. Some of these policies look like they were written over a year ago and they don't recognize a lot of the the work that's been done over the last year.

You know, 8.2 is really moot since there is no h two s. All pipes and tanks are cleaned, open to the air. No new oil and gas is coming in. When you look at LU 10.4 decommissioning of the April PRC four twenty one lease, the timing is really weird because it's gone and the policy now ties it to the EOF's decommissioning, which is on two different properties. So I'm wondering why the tie is there.

Otherwise, the remaining language is worded that gives timing that's already been missed because the city and the state had an MOU that exempted them from much of what would have otherwise been required. LU 10.2, decommissioning the EOF. The policy uses abandonment and decommissioning. And it seems like synonymously, when there are terms of art in this industry and in the implementation plan, section seventeen thirty seven forty speaks to abandonment and removal. Again, these terms abandonment, decommissioning are not defined, and I think they need to be.

And again, enforcing restoration ignores subsection A of the policy that allows facilities to remain if abandoned in place to reduce negative environmental impact. So, again, that ignores adaptive reuse altogether. 10.1 and LU 9.2, Our GPA initiation speaks specifically to these. So, I mean, really pulling out the OSAR designation and just says current zoning instead would accomplish what we're wanting for those. We still need to amend the map regardless.

But it's really redundant because it speaks to it being nonconforming already regardless of that language being in there. And they purchased the site two years ago. It's clean now. We had that GPA application in for a year, almost a year now. We're waiting for completeness determination on the change of owner. And we're ready to roll on getting this thing out of there and a new use that's more appropriate. Thank you.

Madam chair, I have no further public speakers. Thank you.

Commissioner Maynard.

A couple of quick questions first. So for the oil and gas where we do have that language about restoration, what does that mean in this context? And what would be required to restore an abandoned oil and gas facility?

Are you referring to the reference in LU 10.2?

Well, I guess maybe the answer is both. I think I need a refresher on the land use policy, but then also in the Coastal Commission's recommendation to strengthen some of the restoration language. What would the new restrictions, if we took all the Coastal Commission's recommendations here, so that I can understand kind of what's being asked and required in terms of restoring the site?

Well, it might take a little bit if we went through every edit. But I can tell you that, instead of it being called an abandonment plan, they want it to be called an abandonment and restoration plan. So I think that's an important change that they're making. And then they are consistent with that edit throughout on the policies that pertain to oil and gas. And mostly that's related to the Elwood Rancho facility, since the other facilities have been removed. And I think that's the gist of it on the restoration. One word could have a lot of implication.

And you referenced our existing land use plan had some restoration language in there as well. What was your interpretation of our existing general plan guidance as to what would have to happen after you decommissioned a site?

Right. And the existing land use element policies I was laughing because there is the permit for the Elwood Onshore Facility. There's a DP, and you have to do a restoration plan. So there's some overlap between that permit that the coastal commission's familiar with and this language. But Andy looks like he wants to

Yeah. Couple of things. I know we've spoken a little bit with the city attorney's office about some of the language about decommissioning versus abandonment and restoration. So we will follow-up into Mr. Rudbeck's comment about that.

We'll follow-up. And if we feel like we need to have kind of clarification terms, we'll flag that. In terms of what kind of restoration looks like at the EOF, that's LU 10.2 D, which is not proposed for revision by coastal commission staff. And that states that decommissioning shall include restoration of the EOF site to a natural condition or to a condition that is suitable for the uses and development that are allowed within the open space active recreation use category designated for that property. And so just a little context without trying to get into any applications, that site currently is the land use designation is open space active recreation.

So that's why you see those in those policies and sub policies related to the EOF, you see references to open space active recreation. That's and and when we say that current, like Mhmm. As it stood since certainly the adoption of the general plan, the EOF was a nonconforming use, it's because we designated that site as open space active recreation, so an oil and gas processing facility would not be a use allowed in open space active recreation. So a little context there.

Okay.

And and whether there's an application to amend that policy, that's kind of a separate question. Although certainly, if any amendments are made in the future prior to us submitting for certification, those would be reflected in the documents we submit.

Okay. That's really helpful. So I think the recommendation that I would provide based on the feedback tonight is that I would try to maintain our ability to use it as open space active restoration and not introduce new language that would require it to be restored in a way that would say native habitat without active restoration. So I think I would like to see us maintain that current use that was intended in our general plan of open space active restoration.

Just want to be clear. I don't want to prejudge anything. There may be like a separate project seeking a change in designation in the future, and that's not in question and the edits were like like, we're like we're not they the coastal commission staff did not propose a change to the land use designation. So that's kind of a separate question for a separate night as to any changes to that designation. That is not part of what we're presenting tonight.

Yeah. And I think the connection to what we're presenting tonight is the vagueness of the language change to restoration is to me implying maybe a different direction. And so I guess I would want some clarification around that language of restoration and what we mean there to not be more restrictive than what we currently have. And potentially, maybe if there might be other land desegregation again, I haven't seen this particular project that was mentioned. I don't have any opinion on the particular project that was mentioned tonight.

But I do think having some flexibility to think about zoning that would be appropriate in an ESHA in this area, and going through Galita's zoning process and using our existing zoning processes to evaluate whether we would want to change the zoning, I'd want to try and maintain that right of the city and not add additional language that might further restrict our ability to rezone if we wanted to.

I would just support what Commissioner Maynard said. You know, I think the intention has been to, once that's removed, it would be something that the community could enjoy, and recreate at. So, I don't know if there's further clarifications.

Yeah, I would just like to echo what both Commissioner Maynard and Commissioner Peneman said, and absolutely try and get control or whatever around that whole project there, because it's just it's sort of unruly at this point. And yeah. So another conversation for another evening, probably. So Okay. Thank you.

Anybody else? Any further comments on any of this? Yeah, go ahead.

The one thing I did really like about the introduction of restoration language, and I think the project that had gotten mentioned during public comment was already moving in that, is moving to hydrocarbon free and making sure that everything for any oil or gas facilities that are abandoned abandoned and decommissioned, that they're cleaned up. And so I think the cleaning up language is important in there, but then giving us flexibility as to what to do with the product after the site is cleaned up, to clarify. Thank you.

Do we want to go to next steps now?

Sure. And thank you for all that input from everyone here in the room and also from the people online. It's much appreciated. We're planning for workshop number two in early twenty twenty six and looking at the January meeting. And then to talk about the remaining policies, and we'll chip our way through it and see how it goes.

We've kind of hit on some of the longer policy tables at this point. And then after we get your input and the public's input, we will package up comments and then some of our comments as well with the Coastal Commission so that we can meet and discuss and potentially revise. And then we will take that input, and then we will release public draft local programs so that will look like a general plan and zoning. And we'll go through our usual hearing process so that we'll look more familiar to you. And yes, we're going to take it as fast as we can.

This is our priority. So that's why you see a whole team and a consulting firm here. Maybe Cam and Molly and Rachel weren't talking much, but I'll tell you this much. They are working a lot on this project and have been for months, and in Rachel's case, years. So I think that concludes the presentation. And we look forward to seeing you at the next workshop.

Thank you very much. Okay. Do we have any Planning Director comments? Yes.

Thank you. Good evening again, Madam Vice Chair and Commissioners. I just have a few items to report to the Commission this evening. First, I wanted to make you aware that this Thursday, there is a Coastal Housing Coalition Housing Conference, an annual conference that's being hosted in Santa Barbara at the Carrillo Rec Center. And tickets are still available.

I think a couple of commissioners may plan to attend, but if you're interested in attending and have not gotten a ticket, then please let me or our management assistant, Kim Dominguez, know and we can line up a ticket for you. Next, I wanted to alert you that there's going to be a groundbreaking ceremony for the Heritage Ridge project scheduled for the December 19, Friday at ten a. M. At the project site, if you're interested in attending that. Then next, we are coming up on our holiday office closure.

City office City Hall offices will be closed from December 24 through January 2, actually through the fourth, and will be reopening on the January 5. So, we will not have usual City services available during that time. And, we will also not have a second Planning Commission meeting this month. So, our next meeting will be in January. I think we're scheduling it for January 12, where we will likely be back, as Ms.

Wells mentioned, with our second LCP workshop. So, that is a little look ahead and we're excited about next year. We do have a busy year ahead, lots of good and exciting work for the Planning Commission to tackle. And that concludes my report.

Thank you. Any other Planning Commission comments?

Thank you for, the presentation and giving us a chance to comment. Really appreciate it.

And I I would add my thank you. I mean, it's so I'm looking at how much paper there is

Mhmm.

And how what what the level of detail. You've really done an amazing job.

Do we have a motion to adjourn? I motion to adjourn.

I'll second.

Roll call vote, please.

Thank you, commissioners. Beginning with Commissioner Maynard. Aye. Commissioner Peneman. Aye. Commissioner Sarakin. Aye. Vice Chair Miller.

Aye.

And we sail away on a little dream and settle high on the crest of a thrill.